As to the hour of the day when the crucifixion took place, there is some difference in the statements made by the different evangelists. St. Matthew says nothing about the hour when Jesus was crucified. He only says that during the time of the crucifixion, “from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour.” St. Matt. xxvii: 45. This means from twelve o’clock at noon, till three o’clock in the afternoon. St. Luke and St. John both say that it was—“_about_ the sixth hour,” when this great event took place. But it is clear from their way of speaking of it, that they did not wish to be understood as stating the time very exactly. St. Mark says—ch. xv: 25, “And it was the third hour, and they crucified him.” There seems to be a disagreement between these statements. But it is easy enough to reconcile the difference. There are two ways of doing this. One is by supposing that when St. Mark says: “It was the third hour, and they crucified him,” he was speaking of the time when they began to make preparations for the crucifixion, while St. Luke and St. John refer to the time when the preparations were all finished, and the crucifixion had actually taken place. But there is another way of reconciling this apparent difference. The Jews were accustomed to divide their day into four parts, corresponding with the four watches into which the night was divided. Beginning at six o’clock in the morning, which was the time when their day commenced, they sometimes called the first three hours, from six to nine o’clock, the first hour. The next three hours, from nine to twelve o’clock, they called the second hour; and then, according to this way of reckoning, the three hours following, from twelve to three o’clock, would be the third hour. And if _this_ was the way in which St. Mark was speaking, then his _third_ hour would agree exactly with the sixth hour mentioned by St. Luke and St. John. And so, when we think of the time of the crucifixion, we may remember that Jesus hung upon the cross, in dreadful agonies, from “about” twelve o’clock at noon-day until three in the afternoon. O, how long and painful those hours must have seemed to him!