Mark 15:36

A sponge full of vinegar.

The acids of life

They go to a cup of vinegar, and soak a sponge in it, and put it on a stick of hyssop, and then press it against the hot lips of Christ. You say the wine was all anesthetic, and intended to relieve or deaden the pain. But the vinegar was an insult. I am disposed to adopt the theory of the old English commentators, who believed that instead of its being an opiate to soothe, it was vinegar to insult. Malaga and Burgundy for grand dukes and duchesses, and costly wines from royal vats for bloated imperials-but stinging acids for a dying Christ. He took the vinegar! In some lives the saccharine seems to predominate. Life is sunshine on a bank of flowers. A thousand hands to clap approval. In December or in January, looking across their table, they see all their family present. Health rubicund. Skies flamboyant. Days resilient. But in a great many cases there are not so many sugars as acids. The annoyances, and the vexations, and the disappointments of life overpower the successes. There is a gravel in almost every shoe. An Arabian legend says that there was a worm in Solomon’s staff, gnawing its strength away; and there is a weak spot in every earthly support that a man leans on. King George of England forgot all the grandeurs of his throne because, one day in an interview, Beau Brummell called him by his first name, and addressed him as a servant, crying: “George, ring the bell!” Miss Langdon, honoured all the world over for her poetic genius, is so worried with the evil reports set afloat regarding her that she is found dead with an empty bottle of prussic acid in her hand. Goldsmith said that his life was a wretched being, and that all that want and discontent could bring to it had been brought and cries out: “What, then, is there formidable in a gaol?” Corregio’s fine painting is hung up for a tavern sign. Hogarth cannot sell his best paintings, except through a raffle. Andrew Delsart makes the great fresco in the Church of the Annunciata at Florence, and gets for pay a sack of corn; and there are annoyances and vexations in high places as well as in low places, showing that in a great many lives the sours are greater than the sweets. “When Jesus, therefore, had received the vinegar.” It is absurd to suppose that a man who has always been well can sympathize with those who are sick, or that one who has always been honoured can appreciate the sorrow of those who are despised, or that one who has been born to a great fortune can understand the distress and the straits of those who are destitute. The fact that Christ Himself took the vinegar makes Him able to sympathize today and forever with all those whose cup is filled with sharp acids of this life. (Dr. Talmage.)