"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" cried the writer of the twenty-second Psalm in words which have gained great significance to many Christians because of their utterance by the Saviour when on the cross of Calvary.
The poignant prayer of the singer of Israel emerges later in the same Psalm with accents of spiritual triumph and praise. The suffering has been surmounted, the victory is in sight, and the poet joyously sings, "I will declare thy name unto my brethren," and again, "The kingdom is the Lord's: and he is the governor among the nations."
Centuries after the Psalm was written, Jesus of Nazareth, in the hour of his supreme human trial, uttered the Psalmist's words. Commenting on this under the marginal heading "A cry of despair" in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy writes (p. 50): "The appeal of Jesus was made both to his divine Principle, the God who is Love, and to himself, Love's pure idea. Had Life, Truth, and Love forsaken him in his highest demonstration? This was a startling question. No! They must abide in him and he in them, or that hour would be shorn of its mighty blessing for the human race."
