said aloud, but softly, "Verily, this was a righteous man."

Then I reined my horse and rode down the hill. The lights were kindling in Jerusalem; the beacon on the Castle of Antonia was beginning to glow. At a little distance I drew rein and looked back at Golgotha. His cross was there outlined against the sky. I felt myself in the grip of a mighty passion of doubt and wonder! Who was he? Who was he? I would go back and see!

I dismounted beneath his cross and gazed upward, unmindful of the strange looks which my soldiers cast upon me. Tears came to my eyes, old campaigner though I was, tears of grief, of penitence, of dawning faith. I knelt; I prostrated myself before the Christ who hung dead on that accursed tree. I rose again and saw him. Dead? Nay, living!—living evermore in the glory which he had with the Father before the world was! The truth went surging irresistibly through my soul; until at length, able to restrain myself no longer, I cried, caring not though the world heard me, "Verily, this was the Son of God!"

I am old now, and the end draws near. For half a century I have loved and served Him. I have known trials and sorrows not a few, but His presence has upheld me. The promise he gave his disciples the night before his death has been my mainstay: "Lo, I am with you alway!" In the faith of that promise I have seen men and women die with the light of heaven on their faces, heroic amid the flames, triumphant before the lion's eyes. I have heard them once and again protesting with their last breath, "Christianus sum! I am a Christian!"

I, too, am a Christian, and humbly proud of it. The cross in my time has been transformed from an emblem of shame into a symbol of triumph. And the Christ who suffered upon it has been made unto me wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. He is my first, my last, my midst and all in all. I have learned somewhat of the meaning of his life and death and glorious resurrection. Many wonderful hopes have I; but the best is this, that I—the soldier who had charge of his crucifixion—may yet behold his face in peace; that I, who bowed that night with broken heart beneath his cross, may some day look upon the King in his beauty and fall before him, crying, "My Lord and my God!"