Page:The centurion's story (IA centurionsstory00macf).pdf/28

 tall new cross. To crucify a Roman citizen were against the law of our nation. To crucify this godlike man is to outrage the constitution of the universe. Since we must lift this man upon a tree, we would lift him high towards that God of whom he talked and whose high character he most resembled. Those envenomed priests were for flinging the joined timbers on his back and the man would have borne them, too. He bowed his shoulders to their weight. Never a nobler, more submissive victim. But I made them stop and put it on a tall Cyrenian, whose massive shoulders could relieve Atlas of his weighty burden. My men tossed the cross upon the Cyrenian's shoulders and he bore it scowling mightily the while. I trouble not your mind with grisly details. The stretching on rude and lifeless wood of the finest figure of a man that ever came walking on the seas of life; the crashing of the mallet that forced rude nails through the finest fibered, sensitive flesh to the insensate wood; the uplifted cross, the jar and grind and shock as it fell into its socket, the wrench and strain of thews—the small cataracts of plashing blood that came splattering down upon the rocky soil at the instant of elevation! What sighs and tears and tremulous agony of quivering flesh passed hour after hour from the morning till afternoon! Only here let me set down that the vengeful malevolence of the hateful priests continued to the end. They matched his sighs with sneers, they countered his groans with jeers and for every line of his own noble gentleness and magnificent manhood they matched it with a feature of harshest bitterness, revealing that men in bloody anger are more heartless than the beasts. It hurt me to the core when we lifted this man upon the cross and he knew