The Cross The Blood and The Death of Jesus Christ by George Vicesimus Wigram / Also Remarks and Notes on JOHN'S WRITINGS / BIBLE TRUTH PUBLISHERS / Printed in USA

GEORGE VICESIMUS WIGRAM, the twentieth child of Sir Robert Wigram was born in 1805.

He was one of the outstanding men in the early days of the “Brethren” movement. Converted as a young man in 1824, he devoted himself to a lifelong study of the Scriptures. He was editor of “The Christian Witness”, a monthly periodical, and traveled to many countries, preaching the Word.

His writings touch on many subjects but always display the beauties of Christ, their author having drunk deeply of the living waters of God’s precious Word.

The cross seems to me to be used in scripture as especially connected with shame and disgrace. The cross was in itself a cruel and a disgraceful heathen mode of death kept, even by them, for the very vilest. It seemed to say This is a wretch, who has no feelings to be considered, and whose sufferings may be protracted so as to scare others from committing what he has done. By the Jews seeking it for Jesus, it was saying, either We are not Jews or He is no Jew for then, if a sinner, he should have been stoned and in it they were saying that He was not their king as you will see in John 19, nor their prophet, much less Son of God; as done by the Gentiles also, it was the denial of His being the Son of God from whose hand the Gentiles had received their kingly power. Dan:2 The cross is used in scripture as the thing which, in one word, tells what is the present result among men of serving God; of being a disciple; of becoming one; and this not only at the hands of the world, but of the professing world. The cross of Jesus proved this as to Jerusalem and its law; while at the same time it told of His thorough self-renunciation, perfectness of obedience, and of the estimate the world had of God: Jew and Gentile would crucify His Son. The priests of His temple, they would seek it for Him; Pontius Pilate would rather yield it to them, though he knew Jesus was innocent, than have it said himself was not Caesar's friend. It was God's way of telling what He felt about man's sin; about the old man in each of us; about carnality, self-righteousness, and human wisdom; about there being no ground of justification or means of purification, in whole or in part, in us; no door open by which a new life could come in to us; of making the Jew and Gentile shake hands; of stripping all of boasting, specially from the Jew.