LUPUS or VICTIMA (The Victim).

The Victim Slain

Its modern name is Lupus (a wolf), because it looks like one. It may be any animal. The great point of this ancient constellation is that the animal has been slain, and is in the act of falling down dead.

Its Greek name is Thera, a beast, and Lycos, a wolf. Its Latin name is Victima, or Bestia (Vulg. Gen. viii. 17), which sufficiently indicates the great lesson. This is confirmed by its ancient Hebrew name, Asedah, and Arabic Asedaton, which both mean to be slain.

More than 22 of its stars have been catalogued. None of them are higher than the 4th magnitude; most of them are of the 5th or 6th.

True, He was “by wicked hands crucified and slain,” but He is slain here by the Centaur, i.e. by Himself! To make it perfectly clear that it was His own act (without which His death would lose all merit), He uttered those solemn words: “I lay down my life for the sheep…. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again” (John x. 15-18). He “offered Himself without spot to God.” “He put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself” (Heb. ix. 11, 26).

In the ancient Zodiac of Denderah He is pictured as a little child with its finger on its lips, and He is called Sura, a lamb! In other pictures He has, besides, the horn of a goat on one side of His head. All this pointed to one and the same great fact, viz., the development and explanation of what was meant by the bruising of His heel! It meant that this Promised Seed of the woman should come as a child, that He should suffer, and die upon the Cross, for

Hence, the constellation prefigures a silent, willing sacrifice—Christ Jesus, who, “being found in fashion as a man, humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross” (Phil. ii. 5-8).