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enter with your Son, but you linger by the door and you try to count the countless blows and your maternal heart sickens at the sounds, and half-fainting you lean against the wall, and your hot tears fall and your loud sobs reveal your unspeakable woe. Ah! that gentle, loving boy that, as an infant, lay smiling in your arms, that played as a child round your knee, that laid His boyish head on your lap and called you Mother; that, only the other day, held you in His arms and kissed you good-bye forever — Ah! look at Him now stripped of His garments, stripped of His skin, stripped of His flesh, with not a friend in all the wide world but yourself — standing in the midst of His barbarous persecutors, looking around, vainly, among them for one look or word of sympathy; sinking down for a moment under His load of mental and bodily torture — into the dense darkness of misery with not a ray of consolation. A moment only, for they soon rouse Him and put on His garments and hurry Him out past His poor Mother, up to the great courtyard again. She cannot follow Him in there, and, even if she could she could never get near Him with the crowd. For the place is filled with soldiers who seat Him on a stone bench and place on His head a platted crown of huge thorns and force them down and in until their sharp points penetrate the skin and grate on the bones of the skull. Oh! the anguish of the Mother's heart as she listens to those sounds! She cannot see Him, but she knows He is in the midst of that throng, silent and forlorn, the blood streaming down into His eyes and mouth, a scarlet fool garment