For although Claudius had been accused of gambling and drunkenness, not only were no worse sins laid to his charge, but he had successfully established some claim to being considered a learned man.
Concerning the prayer that mountains fall to crush and hide, Farrar , says: "These words of Christ met with a painfully literal illustration when hundreds of the unhappy Jews at the siege of Jerusalem hid themselves in the darkest and vilest subterranean recesses, and when, besides those who were hunted out, no less than two thousand were killed by being buried under the ruins of their hiding places.
Speaking of the murder of the younger Hanan, and other eminent nobles and hierarchs, Josephus says, "I cannot but think that it was because God had doomed this city to destruction as a polluted city, and was resolved to purge His sanctuary by fire, that He cut off these their great defenders and well-wishers; while those that a little before had worn the sacred garments and presided over the public worship, and had been esteemed venerable by those that dwelt in the whole habitable earth, were cast out naked, and seen to be the food of dogs and wild beasts.
By the cross we, too, are crucified with Christ; but alive in Christ. We are no more rebels, but servants; no more servants, but sons! "Let it be counted folly," says Hooker, "or fury, or frenzy, or whatever else; it is our wisdom and our comfort. We care for no knowledge in the world but this, that man hath sinned, and that God hath suffered; that God has made Himself the Son of Man, and that men are made the righteousness of God.
When God's children pass under the shadow of the cross of Calvary, they know that through that shadow lies their passage to the great white throne. For them Gethsemane is as paradise. God fills it with sacred presences; its solemn silence is broken by the music of tender promises, its awful darkness softened and brightened by the sunlight of Heavenly faces and the music of angel wings.