A discursive study of the ministry of our Lord based on the Synoptic Gospels

"Hard by the Cross stood a centurion whose gruesome duty it had been to supervise the execution of Jesus and the thieves who suffered beside him. By this stage in his military career he was doubtless inured to such spectacles of horror. Yet overcome by the unique pathos of this scene, and awed too by the earthquake which so terrifyingly rang down the curtain on it, this hard bitten soldier was moved to cry, 'Certainly this was a righteous man ... Truly this was the Son of God'"