The World's Eye Was Put Out

Samuel Rutherford, reflecting on the three-hour darkness from noon to 3:00 p.m. as Jesus hung on the cross:

Darkness was all in Judea when our Lord suffered. And why? Because the Candle that lighted the sun and the moon was blown out. The God-head was eclipsed, and the world's eye was put out. He took away the sun with him, as it were, to another world, when he that was the world's sun was put out. When he went out of the earth, the sun would not stay behind Him. Sun, what ails thee? 'I have not will to shine when my Lord is going to another world.' As if the sun had said to Jesus, 'Lord, if Thou be going to another world, take me with you.'

--Samuel Rutherford, in Fourteen Communion Sermons by the Rev. Samuel Rutherford, with a Preface and Notes by Rev. Andrew A. Bonar (Glasgow: Charles Glass and Co., n.d.), 286-87; quoted in Donald Macleod, Christ Crucified: Understanding the Atonement (IVP, 2014), 42