De Profundis Clamavi Author:John Hunter Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE SYMBOLISM OF THE CROSS "Jesus Christ and Him crucified."—I Cor. ii. 2. In almost every picture-gallery in Europe we see one subject represented in many... more » different forms—the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The old painters seem never to have tired of it. And in many of their pictures we find standing or kneeling near the Cross, either as spectators or worshippers, men and women of later times. Among the Roman soldiers, the citizens of Jerusalem, the Jewish peasants, and the relatives and friends of the Crucified, we observe bishops and monks, saints and martyrs of the Middle Ages ; and even occasionally the background of the picture is not that of the Holy City, but of Rome or Florence, Siena or Assisi. It is the way which these old teachers of religious truth had of telling their fellows that the Cross is for all lands and times, and not only for the people who lived beneath Syrian skies in the first century of our era. In a million churches all over Western Christendommen and women gather every year in crowds to re-enact in memory the closing scenes of the life of our Lord. All the resources of dramatic symbolism, of music, and speech, and silence are used to impress the lessons which the Cross can teach. The good that is done by this annual commemoration need not, I think, be questioned. It is not wasted time, Mr. Ruskin once said, to submit ourselves to any influence which may bring upon us any noble feeling. It is to be regretted, rather, that these memorial days of Christ should not be more widely and intelligently observed, and that by so many they should be allowed to pass entirely unnoticed, save for holiday and amusement. It is not as ancient history, not as the record of vanished struggles and of sorrows long since comforted, we ought to read the story of the...« less