102 HYSSOP. 



in that act, wherein Christ received the hyssop and vinegar 

 but refused the myrrh. The hyssop was the symbol of purifi 

 cation by the law, and when our Saviour received it, it was 

 the last legal purification which the hyssop should ever make 

 on earth. It had acted its part for fifteen hundred years, and 

 millions had been purified by it. It was a necessary part of that 

 wearisome and bloody ceremonial, which had so long typified 

 the coming Saviour, the true Lamb of God, of whom all the 

 lambs of Jewish sacrifice had been but the faint emblems. 

 But the work was ended ; the Lamb of God had completed his 

 suffering and his sacrifice; henceforth the cross should be the 

 Christian s purification; and, receiving the little floral symbol 

 to his lips, he became &quot;the end&quot; as well as &quot;the beginning&quot; 

 of the law, and exclaimed, &quot; It is finished !&quot; and, as if in sym 

 pathy with that solemn utterance, the veil of the temple, which 

 covered the holiest that the law ever knew, was rent in twain. 

 Henceforth Jesus and his blood should be the all-atoning sacri 

 fice for sin : the use of the hyssop and the bloody sprinkling 

 should terminate in him, and in the power of the cross to cleanse 

 and to atone forever. 



It has been supposed that the capporis spinosa, or common 

 caper, should be added to eighteen others mentioned by Celsius, 

 as plants supposed at various times to be the hyssop; but there 

 is not sufficient reason to differ from the prevalent opinion that 

 the hyssop the name of which we have given is that spoken 

 of in Scripture. It is a little plant, with long, lanceolate 

 leaves and small flowers, and is represented in Plate IV. 



