word, a man capable of all that is possible to one that has been tempted in all points, yet without sin. The Christ here is indeed one who shares our flesh and blood, for such palpitating flesh was never before or since produced in black and white. He does not look down on the crowd with the air of a hero or a martyr, but offering up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears, to Him who is able if He will to save him from death. The dark faces and cruel weapons which form a frame to the spotless figure on which the principal light falls are wonderfully managed to give the utmost effect by contrast. The Son of Man is in charge of the chief jailor, a relentless-looking personage, and is guarded by two or three soldiers; the one who stands immediately to his left grins demoniacally as he relates, with ludicrous action, the insults to which they have just subjected the King of the Jews. However, another of the band seems already disgusted with the part he is playing, and meditates with a kind of sad rage on its iniquity.

But the group of priests and Pharisees immediately below Jesus contrast even more powerfully with the innocent victim. A wellfed worldly priest, arrayed in full pontificals, lawn sleeves, and goldchased cope, is uttering the words: "If thou let this man go, thou art not Cæsar's friend; whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Cæsar.". Next to him a Pharisee, the idealization of fanaticism, cries, with vehement action: "We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God." Last of all, and immediately under the Christ, a brutal bigot, unable to get the attention of the governor, rudely drags at his robe, while he points with his thumb to Jesus, bellowing forth the cry, "Crucify him! crucify him!" The governor, distracted and alarmed, in one breath avows his innocence of the blood of this righteous man, in another gives sentence that what they ask for should be done. Behind the high priest a man with slippery face is communicating the fact to the crowd, who are crying hoarsely, "Crucify him! crucify him!" A head of exceptional cruelty rises from the rabble, as it were its representative, casting a look of hatred on the Christ; on either side of him are two faces, one is shouting in mere sport, of the other little is seen but the upturned eye full of awe at the sight of this divine humanity overwhelmed with atrocious injuries. A group immediately in the foreground represents all the various elements of the crowd. One is proving to three men that Jesus ought to be crucified, the first doubts its justice, the second is half convinced, the third is indifferent, but would not have it otherwise, since the excitement of such scenes sends a thrill of excitement through his dull frame. On a gallery above we see a crowd of faces, among whom Rembrandt appears again as a soldier with an awful instrument of torture in his hand.

But it is not simply the detail of the picture, but its tout ensemble, which is so striking. Nothing better shows Rembrandt's masterly realization of the scene than that, though it is typical of so many which have taken place throughout the history of the world, he has yet given it a unique character, inasmuch as it is impossible to regard the sufferer as a martyr for religion or politics, or for any idea or cause whatsoever. The sufferer is the martyr of Humanity; he dies because he is the only true man in that howling throng of cruelty and weakness.

Thus priests and people have their way, and in a series of pictures, or sometimes on the same plate, Rembrandt has given every stage in the history.

In one picture we have the moment when they are actually raising the cross to which the victim has already been attached. Nothing can well exceed the anguish of the suffering depicted, the beginning of the torture which is to end in death. Among the men who are actually engaged in raising the cross of Calvary is Rembrandt himself, and no one works more energetically ;-touching acknowledgment by the young artist of his own sinfulness and his own share in the sacrifice for the sin of the world. Very near to him among the foremost of those who have come to see justice done on the blasphemer who has dared to call himself the Son of God and to lead souls to perdition, stands a Pharisee, in the guise of a Lutheran or Calvinist divine. Perhaps if we knew all the important personages of the day, we should be able to recognize in this man the portrait of some famous Gomarist of Amsterdam.

*

Coming to the pictures of the "Crucifixion," we will speak first of the smaller etchings. In one, Jesus hangs on a cross very little above the ground; a group are gathered round him, his mother lies fainting at his feet, he looks with suffering pity upon her. In the distance are the walls of a town, it might be some place in Holland; indeed, with the addition of a few faggots round the feet, it would represent the death of some poor Anabaptist.

The most important of the etchings representing the Crucifixion is the "Three Crosses." We cannot do better than avail ourselves of Charles Blanc's description:

"By one of those plays of clare-obscure, familiar to the genius of Rembrandt, he idealizes the ignominious spectacle of the gibbet by causing a supernatural light to fall on it. At first it is only the light of a dull day that renders visible the victims; all but a crowd of people, who press before the Roman cavalry, and the group around Simon the Cyrenian, is unfinished, and not yet worked out. The remainder of the picture is only a touch of genius, in which, by a few traits and strokes, the innermost soul of the subject is expressed. "Without modelling, with some shades, and by a simple outline, put in as rapidly as the heart beats, Rembrandt expresses the emotion of the different * Rembrandt exccuted this picture in 1633, being then about twenty-six years of age.

actors in this great drama. The swoon of Mary, the grief of the apostles, the tenderness of St. John, who embraces the Cross, ready to receive the last sigh of his master; the fright of the Pharisees, who fly trembling; the everlasting brutality of the soldiers, and, perhaps, the remorse of the traitor Judas, who prostrates himself on the earth, repentant and despairing.

"On the same plate Rembrandt goes on working in order that he may represent the full accomplishment of the. sacrifice, the moment when Jesus, uttering a great cry, the cry of death, said 'It is finished.' The sun is eclipsed, the earth is covered with confusion and obscurity, the veil of the Temple is rent in twain, the rocks break, the tombs open. And, as a matter of fact, in the last state of the plate the artist has entirely changed his figures. The group around the Cyrenian has disappeared, some horses are rearing, a rider is overturned. The unrepentant thief is covered with a sinister shadow; a close rain is falling from the black clouds on this scene of iniquity, nubes pluant justum; and the eye can now only see the confused image of one of the Pharisees struck with terror, the silhouette of the executioners, the happy thief who has received the first fruits of the blood of Jesus Christ, and, at last, the form of the Just One who devotes himself for Humanity."

Many persons have perhaps seen prints of the picture barbarously called "The Great Descent from the Cross," and have been shocked by the revolting character of the figure of the Crucified. But let them study it well, and especially in connection with the whole of Rembrandt's conception of the sacrifice of the Son of Man; let them above all bear in mind the thought that I have here tried to bring out, that Rembrandt was striving to depict the true Gospel -the Gospel to the Poor and Suffering-and they will see that nothing in the world could be more touching than the abjectness of the ignominy to which the Son of Man has been reduced.

On the cross, and in the midst of his agony, Jesus applied to himself the words of the twenty-second Psalm: "I am a worm, and no I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death."

man,

What increases the intensity of the feeling arising from the utterly helpless and ignominious manner in which the poor corpse falls, is to see the intense and reverent love and gentle carefulness with which the disciples are taking it down. This is all the more striking, since it is done by poor men who have no other appliance but a couple of ladders. In another plate, the corpse has been laid on the ground at the feet of the Mother, who is supported by sympathetic friends.

But the representation of this scene in which the genius of Rembrandt comes out most characteristically, is the one called "The Descent from the Cross by Torchlight." It is an intensely dark night, and only the lower portion of the Cross is seen on the brow of a hill; the body has been lowered into a shroud, and a man below is preparing a bier to receive it. A brilliant light falls on the principal group, and the weird effect of the scene is enhanced by a white hand held up in the thick obscurity on which the light reflects.

This sad work has taken time, and the cold, grey dawn has come. With heavy hearts the mourners raise the bier, that they may carry its burden to the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. We see them coming slowly round the rock, in which is the grave, where no man had yet been laid. How terrible is the rigidity of death! It is no question that life has for ever gone.

We enter, with the women and the disciples, into the sepulchre. It is a great cave, and the light is dispersed over the interior; but as the body descends a gradual withdrawal of light takes place. This is obtained by different proofs being taken at five successive stages of the plate, in each of which the darkness becomes more intense. At last all is in obscurity; the corpse and the mourners are scarcely seen; the torches are extinct; the night of the tomb has commenced. "Nothing remains but a far-off reflection, dull, nearly invisible, of something which was light, a vague souvenir of something which was life."*

The spirit of suffering and humiliation which Rembrandt represented manifests itself in the fact that he was far less successful with scenes like those of the Resurrection and Ascension than with those that relate to the life and death of our Lord. There is an unreality, not to say a want of imagination, in his rendering of these two subjects, which makes it evident he did not feel them.

When we remember how wonderfully he has portrayed the Annunciation to the Shepherds and the Resurrection of Lazarus, it cannot be said there was any reason in his genius why he should not have produced pictures of these subjects interesting as those of the Passion. It must therefore have been from the fact that the triumphant, victorious note was entirely wanting in the religion which he represented. That religion had been defeated, and had never got beyond the stage of persecution and martyrdom.

Thus in all the events connected with the forty days, the one in which Rembrandt feels most interest is the occasion when two poor men, lost in dismay at the end of all their hopes, are filled with joyful amazement by the sudden appearance of the Master in whom they had trusted. Rembrandt has poured out his whole soul in his efforts to depict the Supper at Emmaus.

"Jesus Made Known in Breaking of Bread" is the subject of the painting now at the Louvre.

In this affecting picture, the two things that strike us most are the extreme poverty of the actors, and the naturalistic conception the painter has of the Resurrection body of Jesus. The risen Christ and the two disciples are represented as very poor men, the table being spread in the humblest manner. But there is the strongest possible contrast between the visage of Christ and that of the * Charles Blanc.

healthy old man who sits transfixed with astonishment as the conviction suddenly dawns, "It is the Lord." For the Christ looks like one who has lately passed through great physical suffering. He is plainly a being who is far more soul than body, and whom you might expect in a moment to prove but a vision. He seems to see what no one else sees. He has exactly the look of one of those men or women whom you are compelled to love because they are so near to God.

In a second picture, where Jesus is departing, Rembrandt does not appear to have been so successful; but in a final one, which is only an etching, the artist has surpassed himself. He has produced in a little picture of two or three inches a scene upon which the eye is never tired of gazing, the wonderful truth of expression and effect is so amazing.

The moment illustrated is that immediately after Jesus has vanished. The apartment is very small, and the table is pushed up almost close to the window, which is closed with a heavy shutter and bolted. The disciple on the further side has risen in astonishment; terror is almost apparent on that good and simple face at so supernatural a circumstance; a strong light from the candle on the table casts a powerful glare on his features, and casts a great, weird, black shadow on the wall. The disciple who is in front of the table turns, with equal surprise, towards the spot where the guest was the moment before; his face is traced in vivid outline by the light of the candle immediately behind. But the most eloquent point in the picture-its subject, the central fact which engages alike the attention of the spectator and of the disciples-is the empty chair; it seems, in some sense, to be itself endowed with life; its form, colour, and position speak to the imagination and to the heart.

Thus, nothing is more manifest in the works of Rembrandt-the works of a whole life-than this: that to him the Gospel of Jesus Christ was the Gospel of the Poor. From the moment he first depicts the babe lying in the stall of an ox, among the dark and gloomy shadows of a stable, to the hour when, still arrayed in the homely garments of the poor, he alternately consorts with angels and with men who wear patched clothes and clouted shoes, he represents Jesus as the Poor Man, the companion of the suffering children of want. He is the Man who goes about doing good, and has nowhere to lay his head. It is this brotherhood in poverty which he loves most to display in the Saviour's character. Doubtless he misses some of its grander features; but if he gives only a side of the Gospel it is an all-important one, since it is the conception of the Poor and Suffering of the true character of the Saviour of the World.

The outbursts which have most alarmed Europe,-Lollardism, the Jacquerie, Peasant Revolts, Anabaptism, the Camisard Insurrection,