Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 7.djvu/37

 ABELARD

THE DIVINE TRAGEDY

, therefore, Christ is spoken of as about to be crowned or about to be crucified it is said that He "went forth"; to signify that the Jews, who were guilty of so great wickedness against Him, were given over to reprobation, and that His grace would now pass to the vast extent of the Gentiles, where the salvation of the Cross and His own exaltation by the gain of many peoples, in the place of the one nation of the Jews, has extended itself. Whence, also, to-day we rightly go forth to adore the Cross in the open plain, showing mystically that both glory and salvation had departed from the Jews and had spread themselves among the Gentiles. But in that we afterward returned [in procession] to the place whence we had set forth, we signify that in the end of the world the grace of God