Produced by Al Haines
A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion.
HODDER & STOUGHTON
A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON.
Ever since I wrote, in a contracted form, The Life of Jesus Christ,the desire has slumbered in my mind to describe on a much more extendedscale the closing passages of the Saviour's earthly history; and,although renewed study has deepened my sense of the impossibility ofdoing these scenes full justice, yet the subject has never ceased toattract me, as being beyond all others impressive and remunerative.
The limits of our Lord's Passion are somewhat indeterminate.Krummacher begins with the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, Tauler withthe Feet-washing before the Last Supper, and Rambach with Gethsemane;most end with the Death and Burial; but Grimm, a Roman Catholic, thelatest writer on the subject, means to extend his Leidensgeschichteto the end of the Forty Days. Taking the word "passion" in the strictsense, I have commenced at the point where, by falling into the handsof His enemies, our Lord was deprived of voluntary activity; and I havefinished with the Burial. No doubt the same unique greatness belongsto the scenes of the previous evening; and I should like to write ofChrist among His Friends as I have here written of Him among His Foes;but for this purpose a volume at least as large as the present onewould be requisite; and the portion here described has an obvious unityof its own.
The bibliography of the Passion is given with considerable fulness inZöckler's Das Kreuz Christi; but a good many of the books thereenumerated may be said to have been superseded by the monumental workof Nebe, Die Leidensgeschichte unsers Herrn Hesu Christi (2 vols.,1881), which, though not a work of genius, is written on socomprehensive a plan and with such abundance of learning that nothingcould better serve the purpose of anyone who wishes to draw theskeleton before painting the picture. Of the numerous Lives of Christthose by Keim and Edersheim are worthy of special notice in this partof the history, because of the fulness of information from classicalsources in the one and from Talmudical in the other. Steinmeyer(Leidensgeschichte) is valuable on apologetic questions. On theSeven Words from the Cross there is an extensive special literature.Schleiermacher and Tholuck are remarkably good; and there are volumesby Baring-Gould, Scott Holland and others.
In the sub-title I have called this book a Devotional History, becausethe subject is one which has to be studied with the heart as well asthe head. But I have not on this account written in the declamatoryand interrogatory style common in devotional works. I have to confessthat some even of the most famous books on the Passion are to meintolerably tedious, because they are written, so to speak, in oh's andah's. Surely this is not essential to devotion. The scenes of thePassion ought, indeed, to stir the depths