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Show 120 BY PATH AND TKAIL. the heart and the imagination, and we are overwhelmed with pity and sympathy. If we are familiar with the Holy Scriptures we hear the patEetic cry of Isais: " There is no beauty in Him now, nor comeliness despised, * * * a man of sorrows. * * * His look was as it were hidden from us. " He was led as a sheep to the slaughter and He did not open His mouth." " I have given my body to the scourgers, and my cheeks to the strikers; I have not turned away my face from them that rebuked me, and spat upon me." We call up the prophetic words of the inspired writer of the Psalms. ' ' I am poured out like water : they have dug my hands and feet." " They gave me gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink: My God, My God, hast thou forsaken me ? ' ' We listen to Jeremias speaking with the voice of the Victim of Divine Love sacrificed before our very eyes : ' ' My tabernacle is laid waste, all my cords are broken; my children have abandoned me, and they are not : there is none to stretch forth my tent any more : I am left alone." While we stand with eyes fastened on the solitary and bleeding Figure, we see Him die. He is dead ! From His hands, from His head fallen away from the dead muscles and resting on the naked breast, from the gaping wound made by the soldier's lance, the blood no longer flows. The body is bloodless, but between the muscles, through the delicate and transparent skin, one may count the bones of the Crucified, one might number the pulsations of the heart before it ceased to beat. |