Deliverance from the Cross — Page 70
beating after his body was removed from the cross has been proved beyond doubt and cannot be contradicted. At the end of his exposition, which set out in detail the evidence furnished by the photographs and the conclusions to be drawn therefrom, Professor Hirt said: I should like to sum up by emphasising once more that we have so much evidence and so many testimonials about the activity of the heart in the body of Jesus during and after his removal from the cross that it can never be disproved. Mr. Solomon, who by a strange coincidence had provided the occasion for the exposition by Professor Hirt at Cologne, on return to New York gave a circle of intimate friends an account of the whole affair and at the end of it he observed: You cannot imagine how confused I was when I left Cologne University. I jumped into a taxi and went to the nearest Pan-American Airways office to make a booking for New York, collected my things from the hotel, and was just in time to catch the plane. These discoveries about the Shroud strike you who are Christians differently; but I am a Jew and these things are more important to me as a Jew than as a journalist. I recovered my composure only when I was seated in the aircraft. The long flight gave me an opportunity to think the matter over quietly. Sleep was out of the question. How can I describe it? In my head my thoughts revolved 70