passion. The first and second Synoptics(1) represent the last cry of Jesus to have been a quotation from Ps. xxii. 1: "Eli (or Mk., Eloi), Eli, lema sabacthani? that is to say: My God, my God, why didst thou forsake me?" This, according to them, evidently, was the last articulate utterance of the expiring Master, for they merely add that "when he cried again with a loud voice," Jesus yielded up his spirit.(2) Neither of the other Gospels has any mention of this cry. The third Gospel substitutes: "And when Jesus cried with a loud voice, he said: Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit, and having said this he expired."(3) This is an almost literal quotation from the Septuagint version of Ps. xxxi. 5. The fourth Gospel has a totally different cry (xix. 30), for, on receiving the vinegar, which accomplished the Scripture, he represents Jesus as saying: "It is finished" [------], and immediately expiring. It will be observed that seven sayings are attributed to Jesus on the cross, of which the first two Gospels have only one, the third Synoptic three, and the fourth Gospel three. We do not intend to express any opinion here in favour of any of these, but we merely point out the remarkable fact that, with the exception of the one cry in the first two Synoptics, each Gospel has ascribed different sayings to the dying Master, and not only no two of them agree, but in some important instances the statement of the one evangelist seems absolutely to exclude the accounts of the others. Every one knows the hackneyed explanation of apologists, but in works which repeat each other so much elsewhere, it certainly is a curious phenomenon that there is so little {422}