It filled one with a horror
which was far indeed removed from the pious horror which that Symbol is
intended to arouse in every true believer. It emphasized all the ghastly
ugliness of death upon that most barbarous of gallows, without any
suggestion of the beauty and immensity of the Divine Martyrdom of Him Who
in the likeness of the sinful flesh was Alone without sin.
And to me the ghastliest and most pitiful thing of all was an artifice
which its maker had introduced for the purpose of conveying some suggestion
of the supernatural to that mangled, malformed, less than human
representation. Into the place of the wound made by the spear of Longinus,
he had introduced a strip of crystal which caught the light at certain
angles--more particularly when there were lighted tapers in the room--so
that in reflecting this it seemed to shed forth luminous rays.
An odd thing was that my mother--who looked upon that Crucifix with eyes
that were very different from mine--would be at pains in the evening when
lights were fetched to set a taper at such an angle as was best calculated
to produce the effect upon which the sculptor had counted. What
satisfaction it can have been to her to see reflected from that glazed
wound the light which she herself had provided for the purpose, I am lost
to think.
Pages:
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51