But then there was another thing that took place at the crucifixion of Jesus which also proves the certainty of his death. We read in St. John xix: 34—“But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.” If Jesus had not been dead before this took place, that cruel spear, thrust into his heart, would certainly have killed him. If Jesus had been alive when the soldier did this, not blood and water, but only blood, would have flowed out from the wound which the spear made. And learned physicians who have examined this matter tell us that two things are clearly proved by this flowing out of blood and water from the wound which the soldier’s spear had made in our Saviour’s side. One of these is, that he was already dead. The soldier’s spear did not kill him, but it proved that he was dead before the wound was made. And then the other thing which it proved was that Jesus had died of a broken heart. In Dr. Hanna’s “Life of Christ,” Vol. III. pp. 369-379, may be found letters from several eminent Scottish physicians, showing that nothing but a broken heart could account for the flowing out of “blood and water” from the wound in our Saviour’s side. It was not being nailed to the cross that killed our blessed Lord. Neither was it the wound made by the spear. No, but it was the great sorrow he had felt in being made to bear our sins, that had really broken his heart. The sixty-ninth Psalm is one of the passages in the Old Testament that refers to Christ. It is he who is speaking there. And in the twentieth verse of that Psalm, we find him saying of himself, “_Reproach hath broken my heart._” And so when we think of “the blood and water” that flowed out from his wounded side, and of the drawing out of those nails from his hands and feet, we may feel perfectly sure about the certainty of the death of Christ. _The next lesson that we learn from the burial of Christ is about—THE FULFILLMENT OF HIS WORD._