Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/375

Rh The last supreme moment of mockery, desertion, torture, added to an overwhelming sense of the magnitude

of his work, wrung from his lips the awful cry, “My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” This despairing appeal, if made to a human parent, would impugn the justice and love of a father who could withhold a clear token of his presence, to sustain and bless so faithful a son. The appeal of Jesus was made both to the divine Principle, the God who is Love, and to himself, Love's pure idea. Had Life, Truth, and Love forsaken him in his highest demonstration of them? This was a startling question! No! They must abide in him and he in them, or that hour would be shorn of its mighty blessing for the human race.

If his full recognition of eternal Life had only for a moment given way before the evidence of the bodily

senses, even under such awful stress of circumstances, what would his accusers have said? Even what they did say, — that Jesus' teachings were false, and that all evidence of their correctness was destroyed by his death.

The burden of that hour was terrible beyond human conception. The distrust of mortal minds, disbelieving

the purpose of his mission, was a million times sharper than the thorns which pierced his flesh. The real cross, which he bore up the hill of grief, was the world's hatred of Truth and Love. Not the spear, nor the material cross, wrung from his faithful lips the plaintive cry, Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani. It was the possible loss of something more important than human life which moved him, — the possible