XIX.

_JESUS BEFORE PILATE._

"They led Jesus therefore from Caiaphas into the palace: and it was

early; and they themselves entered not into the palace, that they

might not be defiled, but might eat the Passover. Pilate therefore

went out unto them, and saith, What accusation bring ye against this

man? They answered and said unto him, If this man were not an

evil-doer, we should not have delivered Him up unto thee. Pilate

therefore said unto them, Take Him yourselves, and judge Him

according to your law. The Jews said unto him, It is not lawful for

us to put any man to death: that the word of Jesus might be

fulfilled, which He spake, signifying by what manner of death He

should die. Pilate therefore entered again into the palace, and

called Jesus, and said unto Him, Art Thou the King of the Jews?

Jesus answered, Sayest thou this of thyself, or did others tell it

thee concerning Me? Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Thine own nation

and the chief priests delivered Thee unto me: what hast Thou done?

Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if My kingdom were

of this world, then would My servants fight, that I should not be

delivered to the Jews: but now is My kingdom not from hence. Pilate

therefore said unto Him, Art Thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou

sayest that I am a king. To this end have I been born, and to this

end am I come into the world, that I should bear witness unto the

truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth My voice. Pilate saith

unto Him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out

again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find no crime in Him.

But ye have a custom, that I should release unto you one at the

Passover: will ye therefore that I release unto you the King of the

Jews? They cried out therefore again, saying, Not this man, but

Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber. Then Pilate therefore took

Jesus, and scourged Him. And the soldiers plaited a crown of thorns,

and put it on His head, and arrayed Him in a purple garment; and

they came unto Him, and said, Hail, King of the Jews! and they

struck Him with their hands. And Pilate went out again, and saith

unto them, Behold I bring Him out to you, that ye may know that I

find no crime in Him. Jesus therefore came out, wearing the crown of

thorns and the purple garment. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold,

the man! When therefore the chief priests and the officers saw Him,

they cried out, saying, Crucify Him, crucify Him. Pilate saith unto

them, Take Him yourselves, and crucify Him: for I find no crime in

Him. The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by that law He ought

to die, because He made Himself the Son of God. When Pilate

therefore heard this saying he was the more afraid; and he entered

into the palace again, and saith unto Jesus, Whence art Thou? But

Jesus gave him no answer. Pilate therefore saith unto Him, Speakest

Thou not unto me? knowest Thou not that I have power to release

Thee, and have power to crucify Thee? Jesus answered Him, Thou

wouldest have no power against Me, except it were given thee from

above: therefore he that delivered Me unto thee hath greater sin.

Upon this Pilate sought to release Him: but the Jews cried out,

saying, If thou release this man, thou art not Caesar's friend: every

one that maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar. When Pilate

therefore heard these words, he brought Jesus out, and sat down on

the judgment-seat at a place called The Pavement, but in Hebrew,

Gabbatha. Now it was the preparation of the Passover: it was about

the sixth hour. And he saith unto the Jews, Behold, your King! They

therefore cried out, Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him.

Pilate saith unto them, Shall I crucify your King? The chief priests

answered, We have no king but Caesar. Then therefore he delivered Him

unto them to be crucified."--JOHN xviii. 28-xix. 16.

John tells us very little of the examination of Jesus by Annas and

Caiaphas, but he dwells at considerable length on His trial by Pilate.

The reason of this different treatment is probably to be found in the

fact that the trial before the Sanhedrim was ineffective until the

decision had been ratified by Pilate, as well as in the circumstance

noted by John that the decision of Caiaphas was a foregone conclusion.

Caiaphas was an unscrupulous politician who allowed nothing to stand

between him and his objects. To the weak councillors who had expressed a

fear that it might be difficult to convict a person so innocent as Jesus

he said with supreme contempt: "Ye know nothing at all. Do you not see

the opportunity we have of showing our zeal for the Roman Government by

sacrificing this man who claims to be King of the Jews? Innocent of

course He is, and all the better so, for the Romans cannot think He dies

for robbery or wrong-doing. He is a Galilean of no consequence,

connected with no good family who might revenge His death." This was the

scheme of Caiaphas. He saw that the Romans were within a very little of

terminating the incessant troubles of this Judaean province by enslaving

the whole population and devastating the land; this catastrophe might

be staved off a few years by such an exhibition of zeal for Rome as

could be made in the public execution of Jesus.

So far as Caiaphas and his party were concerned, then, Jesus was

prejudged. His trial was not an examination to discover whether He was

guilty or innocent, but a cross-questioning which aimed at betraying Him

into some acknowledgment which might give colour to the sentence of

death already decreed. Caiaphas or Annas[24] invites Him to give some

account of His disciples and of His doctrines. In some cases His

disciples carried arms, and among them was one zealot, and there might

be others known to the authorities as dangerous or suspected characters.

And Annas might expect that in giving some account of His teaching the

honesty of Jesus might betray Him into expressions which could easily be

construed to His prejudice. But he is disappointed. Jesus replies that

it is not for Him, arraigned and bound as a dangerous prisoner, to give

evidence against Himself. Thousands had heard Him in all parts of the

country. He had delivered those supposed inflammatory addresses not to

midnight gatherings and secret societies, but in the most public places

He could find--in the Temple, from which no Jew was excluded, and in the

synagogues, where official teachers were commonly present. Annas is

silenced; and mortified though he is, he has to accept the ruling of his

prisoner as indicating the lines on which the trial should proceed. His

mortification does not escape the notice of one of those poor creatures

who are ever ready to curry favour with the great by cruelty towards the

defenceless, or at the best of that large class of men who cannot

distinguish between official and real dignity; and the first of those

insults is given to the hitherto sacred person of Jesus, the first of

that long series of blows struck by a dead, conventional religion

seeking to quench the truth and the life of what threatens its slumber

with awakening.

Had the Roman governor not been present in the city the high priests and

their party might have ventured to carry into effect their own sentence.

But Pilate had already shown during his six years of office that he was

not a man to overlook anything like contempt of his supremacy. Besides,

they were not quite sure of the temper of the people; and a rescue, or

even an attempted rescue, of their prisoner would be disastrous.

Prudence therefore bids them hand Him over to Pilate, who had both legal

authority to put Him to death and means to quell any popular

disturbance. Besides, the purpose of Caiaphas could better be served by

bringing before the governor this claimant to the Messiahship.

Pilate was present in Jerusalem at this time in accordance with the

custom of the Roman procurators of Judaea, who came up annually from

their usual residence at Caesarea to the Jewish capital for the double

purpose of keeping order while the city was crowded with all kinds of

persons who came up to the feast, and of trying cases reserved for his

decision. And the Jews no doubt thought it would be easy to persuade a

man who, as they knew to their cost, set a very low value on human blood

to add one victim more to the robbers or insurgents who might be

awaiting execution. Accordingly, as soon as day dawned and they dared to

disturb the governor, they put Jesus in chains as a condemned criminal

and led Him away, all their leading men following, to the quarters of

Pilate, either in the fortress Antonia or in the magnificent palace of

Herod. Into this palace, being the abode of a Gentile, they could not

enter lest they should contract pollution and incapacitate themselves

for eating the Passover,--the culminating instance of religious

scrupulosity going hand in hand with cruel and blood-thirsty

criminality. Pilate with scornful allowance for their scruples goes out

to them, and with the Roman's instinctive respect for the forms of

justice demands the charge brought against this prisoner, in whose

appearance the quick eye so long trained to read the faces of criminals

is at a loss to discover any index to His crime.

This apparent intention on Pilate's part, if not to reopen the case at

least to revise their procedure, is resented by the party of Caiaphas,

who exclaim, "If He were not a malefactor we would not have delivered

Him up unto thee. Take our word for it; He is guilty; do not scruple to

put Him to death." But if they were indignant that Pilate should propose

to revise their decision, he is not less so that they should presume to

make him their mere executioner. All the Roman pride of office, all the

Roman contempt and irritation at this strange Jewish people, come out in

his answer, "If you will make no charge against Him and refuse to allow

me to judge Him, take Him yourselves and do what you can with Him,"

knowing well that they dared not inflict death without his sanction, and

that this taunt would pierce home. The taunt they did feel, although

they could not afford to show that they felt it, but contented

themselves with laying the charge that He had forbidden the people to

give tribute to Caesar and claimed to be Himself a king.

As Roman law permitted the examination to be conducted within the

praetorium, though the judgment must be pronounced outside in public,

Pilate re-enters the palace and has Jesus brought in, so that apart from

the crowd he may examine Him. At once he puts the direct question,

Guilty or not guilty of this political offence with which you stand

charged?--"Art Thou the King of the Jews?" But to this direct question

Jesus cannot give a direct answer, because the words may have one sense

in the lips of Pilate, another in His own. Before He answers He must

first know in which sense Pilate uses the words. He asks therefore,

"Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee?" Are you

inquiring because you are yourself concerned in this question? or are

you merely uttering a question which others have put in your mouth? To

which Pilate with some heat and contempt replies, "Am I a Jew? How can

you expect me to take any personal interest in the matter? Thine own

nation and the chief priests have delivered Thee unto me."

Pilate, that is to say, scouts the idea that he should take any interest

in questions about the Messiah of the Jews. And yet was it not possible

that, like some of his subordinates, centurions and others, he too

should perceive the spiritual grandeur of Jesus and should not be

prevented by his heathen upbringing from seeking to belong to this

kingdom of God? May not Pilate also be awakened to see that man's true

inheritance is the world unseen? may not that expression of fixed

melancholy, of hard scorn, of sad, hopeless, proud indifference, give

place to the humble eagerness of the inquiring soul? may not the heart

of a child come back to that bewildered and world-encrusted soul? Alas!

this is too much for Roman pride. He cannot in presence of this bound

Jew acknowledge how little life has satisfied him. He finds the

difficulty so many find in middle life of frankly showing that they have

in their nature deeper desires than the successes of life satisfy. There

is many a man who seals up his deeper instincts and does violence to his

better nature because, having begun his life on worldly lines, he is too

proud now to change, and crushes down, to his own eternal hurt, the

stirrings of a better mind within him, and turns from the gentle

whisperings that would fain bring eternal hope to his heart.

It is possible that Jesus by His question meant to suggest to Pilate the

actual relation in which this present trial stood to His previous trial

by Caiaphas. For nothing could more distinctly mark the baseness and

malignity of the Jews than their manner of shifting ground when they

brought Jesus before Pilate. The Sanhedrim had condemned Him, not for

claiming to be King of the Jews, for that was not a capital offence, but

for assuming Divine dignity. But that which in their eyes was a crime

was none in the judgment of Roman law; it was useless to bring Him

before Pilate and accuse Him of blasphemy. They therefore accused Him of

assuming to be King of the Jews. Here, then, were the Jews "accusing

Jesus before the Roman governor of that which, in the first place, they

knew that Jesus denied in the sense in which they urged it, and which,

in the next place, had the charge been true, would have been so far from

a crime in their eyes that it would have been popular with the whole

nation."

But as Pilate might very naturally misunderstand the character of the

claim made by the accused, Jesus in a few words gives him clearly to

understand that the kingdom He sought to establish could not come into

collision with that which Pilate represented: "My kingdom is not of this

world." The most convincing proof had been given of the spiritual

character of the kingdom in the fact that Jesus did not allow the sword

to be used in forwarding His claims. "If My kingdom were of this world,

then would My servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the

Jews: but now is My kingdom not from hence." This did not quite satisfy

Pilate. He thought that still some mystery of danger might lurk behind

the words of Jesus. There was nothing more acutely dreaded by the early

emperors than secret societies. It might be some such association Jesus

intended to form. To allow such a society to gain influence in his

province would be a gross oversight on Pilate's part. He therefore

seizes upon the apparent admission of Jesus and pushes Him further with

the question, "Thou art a king then?" But the answer of Jesus removes

all fear from the mind of His judge. He claims only to be a king of the

truth, attracting to Himself all who are drawn by a love of truth. This

was enough for Pilate. "Aletheia" was a country beyond his jurisdiction,

a Utopia which could not injure the Empire. "Tush!" he says, "what is

Aletheia? Why speak to me of ideal worlds? What concern have I with

provinces that can yield no tribute and offer no armed resistance?"

Pilate, convinced of the innocence of Jesus, makes several attempts to

save Him. All these attempts failed, because, instead of at once and

decidedly proclaiming His innocence and demanding His acquittal, he

sought at the same time to propitiate His accusers. One generally

expects from a Roman governor some knowledge of men and some

fearlessness in his use of that knowledge. Pilate shows neither. His

first step in dealing with the accusers of Jesus is a fatal mistake.

Instead of at once going to his judgment-seat and pronouncing

authoritatively the acquittal of his Prisoner, and clearing his court of

all riotously disposed persons, he in one breath declared Jesus innocent

and proposed to treat Him as guilty, offering to release Him as a boon

to the Jews. A weaker proposal could scarcely have been made. There was

nothing, absolutely nothing, to induce the Jews to accept it, but in

making it he showed a disposition to treat with them--a disposition they

did not fail to make abundant use of in the succeeding scenes of this

disgraceful day. This first departure from justice lowered him to their

own level and removed the only bulwark he had against their insolence

and blood-thirstiness. Had he acted as any upright judge would have

acted and at once put his Prisoner beyond reach of their hatred, they

would have shrunk like cowed wild beasts; but his first concession put

him in their power, and from this point onwards there is exhibited one

of the most lamentable spectacles in history,--a man in power tossed

like a ball between his convictions and his fears; a Roman not without a

certain doggedness and cynical hardness that often pass for strength of

character, but held up here to view as a sample of the weakness that

results from the vain attempt to satisfy both what is bad and what is

good in us.

His second attempt to save Jesus from death was more unjust and as

futile as the first. He scourges the Prisoner whose innocence he had

himself declared, possibly under the idea that if nothing was confessed

by Jesus under this torture it might convince the Jews of His innocence,

but more probably under the impression that they might be satisfied when

they saw Jesus bleeding and fainting from the scourge. The Roman

scourge was a barbarous instrument, its heavy thongs being loaded with

metal and inlaid with bone, every cut of which tore away the flesh. But

if Pilate fancied that when the Jews saw this lacerated form they would

pity and relent, he greatly mistook the men he had to do with. He failed

to take into account the common principle that when you have wrongfully

injured a man you hate him all the more. Many a man becomes a murderer,

not by premeditation, but having struck a first blow and seeing his

victim in agony he cannot bear that that eye should live to reproach him

and that tongue to upbraid him with his cruelty. So it was here. The

people were infuriated by the sight of the innocent, unmurmuring

Sufferer whom they had thus mangled. They cannot bear that such an

object be left to remind them of their barbarity, and with one fierce

yell of fury they cry, "Crucify Him, crucify Him."[25]

A third time Pilate refused to be the instrument of their inhuman and

unjust rage, and flung the Prisoner on their hands: "Take Him

yourselves, and crucify Him: for I find no crime in Him." But when the

Jews answered that by their law He ought to die, because "He made

Himself the Son of God," Pilate was again seized with dread, and

withdrew his Prisoner for the fourth time into the palace. Already he

had remarked in His demeanour a calm superiority which made it seem

quite possible that this extraordinary claim might be true. The books he

had read at school and the poems he had heard since he grew up had told

stories of how the gods had sometimes come down and dwelt with men. He

had long since discarded such beliefs as mere fictions. Still, there was

something in the bearing of this Prisoner before him that awakened the

old impression, that possibly this single planet with its visible

population was not the whole universe, that there might be some other

unseen region out of which Divine beings looked down upon earth with

pity, and from which they might come and visit us on some errand of

love. With anxiety written on his face and heard in his tone he asks,

"Whence art Thou?" How near does this man always seem to be to breaking

through the thin veil and entering with illumined vision into the

spiritual world, the world of truth and right and God! Would not a word

now from Jesus have given him entrance? Would not the repetition of the

solemn affirmation of His divinity which He had given to the Sanhedrim

have been the one thing wanted in Pilate's case, the one thing to turn

the scale in the favour of Jesus? At first sight it might seem so; but

so it seemed not to the Lord. He preserves an unbroken silence to the

question on which Pilate seems to hang in an earnest suspense. And

certainly this silence is by no means easy to account for. Shall we say

that He was acting out His own precept, "Give not that which is holy to

dogs"? Shall we say that He who knew what was in man saw that though

Pilate was for the moment alarmed and in earnest, yet there was beneath

that earnestness an ineradicable vacillation? It is very possible that

the treatment He had received at Pilate's hand had convinced Him that

Pilate would eventually yield to the Jews; and what need, then, of

protracting the process? No man who has any dignity and self-respect

will make declarations about his character which he sees will do no

good: no man is bound to be at the beck of every one to answer

accusations they may bring against him; by doing so he will often only

involve himself in miserable, petty wranglings, and profit no one. Jesus

therefore was not going to make revelations about Himself which He saw

would only make Him once again a shuttlecock driven between the two

contending parties.

Besides--and this probably is the main reason of the silence--Pilate was

now forgetting altogether the relation between himself and his Prisoner.

Jesus had been accused before him on a definite charge which he had

found to be baseless. He ought therefore to have released Him. This new

charge of the Jews was one of which Pilate could not take cognisance;

and of this Jesus reminds him by His silence. Jesus might have made

influence for Himself by working upon the superstition of Pilate; but

this was not to be thought of.

Offended at His silence, Pilate exclaims: "Speakest Thou not unto me?

Knowest Thou not that I have power to release Thee, and have power to

crucify Thee?" Here was an unwonted kind of prisoner who would not curry

favour with His judge. But instead of entreating Pilate to use this

power in His favour Jesus replies: "Thou wouldest have no power against

Me, except it were given thee from above; therefore he that delivered Me

unto thee hath greater sin." Pilate's office was the ordinance of God,

and therefore his judgments should express the justice and will of God;

and it was this which made the sin of Caiaphas and the Jews so great:

they were making use of a Divine ordinance to serve their own

God-resisting purposes. Had Pilate been a mere irresponsible executioner

their sin would have been sufficiently heinous; but in using an

official who is God's representative of law, order, and justice to

fulfil their own wicked and unjust designs they recklessly prostitute

God's ordinance of justice and involve themselves in a darker

criminality.

More impressed than ever by this powerful statement falling from the

lips of a man weakened by the scourging, Pilate makes one more effort to

save Him. But now the Jews play their last card and play it

successfully. "If thou release this man, thou art not Caesar's friend."

To lay himself open to a charge of treason or neglect of the interests

of Caesar was what Pilate could not risk. At once his compassion for the

Prisoner, his sense of justice, his apprehensions, his proud

unwillingness to let the Jews have their way, are overcome by his fear

of being reported to the most suspicious of emperors. He prepared to

give his judgment, taking his place on the official seat, which stood on

a tesselated pavement, called in Aramaic "Gabbatha," from its elevated

position in sight of the crowds standing outside. Here, after venting

his spleen in the weak sarcasm "Shall I crucify your King?" he formally

hands over his Prisoner to be crucified. This decision was at last come

to, as John records, about noon of the day which prepared for and

terminated in the Paschal Supper.

Pilate's vacillation receives from John a long and careful treatment.

Light is shed upon it, and upon the threat which forced him at last to

make up his mind, from the account which Philo gives of his character

and administration. "With a view," he says, "to vex the Jews, Pilate

hung up some gilt shields in the palace of Herod, which they judged a

profanation of the holy city, and therefore petitioned him to remove

them. But when he steadfastly refused to do so, for he was a man of

very inflexible disposition and very merciless as well as very

obstinate, they cried out, 'Beware of causing a tumult, for Tiberius

will not sanction this act of yours; and if you say that he will, we

ourselves will go to him and supplicate your master.' This threat

exasperated Pilate in the highest degree, as he feared that they might

really go to the Emperor and impeach him with respect to other acts of

his government--his corruption, his acts of insolence, his habit of

insulting people, his cruelty, his continual murders of people untried

and uncondemned, and his never-ending and gratuitous and most grievous

inhumanity. Therefore, being exceedingly angry, and being at all times a

man of most ferocious passions, he was in great perplexity, neither

venturing to take down what he had once set up nor wishing to do

anything which could be acceptable to his subjects, and yet fearing the

anger of Tiberius. And those who were in power among the Jews, seeing

this and perceiving that he was inclined to change his mind as to what

he had done, but that he was not willing to be thought to do so,

appealed to the Emperor."[26] This sheds light on the whole conduct of

Pilate during this trial--his fear of the Emperor, his hatred of the

Jews and desire to annoy them, his vacillation and yet obstinacy; and we

see that the mode the Sanhedrim now adopted with Pilate was their usual

mode of dealing with him: now, as always, they saw his vacillation,

disguised as it was by fierceness of speech, and they knew he must yield

to the threat of complaining to Caesar.

The very thing that Pilate feared, and to avoid which he sacrificed the

life of our Lord, came upon him six years after. Complaints against him

were sent to the Emperor; he was deposed from his office, and so

stripped of all that made life endurable to him, that, "wearied with

misfortunes," he died by his own hand. Perhaps we are tempted to think

Pilate's fate severe; we naturally sympathise with him; there are so

many traits of character which show well when contrasted with the

unprincipled violence of the Jews. We are apt to say he was weak rather

than wicked, forgetting that moral weakness is just another name for

wickedness, or rather is that which makes a man capable of any

wickedness. The man we call wicked has his one or two good points at

which we can be sure of him. The weak man we are never sure of. That he

has good feelings is nothing, for we do not know what may be brought to

overcome these feelings. That he has right convictions is nothing; we

may have thought he was convinced to-day, but to-morrow his old fears

have prevailed. And who is the weak man who is thus open to every kind

of influence? He is the man who is not single-minded. The single-minded,

worldly man makes no pretension to holiness, but sees at a glance that

that interferes with his real object; the single-minded, godly man has

only truth and righteousness for his aim, and does not listen to fears

or hopes suggested by the world. But the man who attempts to gratify

both his conscience and his evil or weak feelings, the man who fancies

he can so manipulate the events of his life as to secure his own selfish

ends as well as the great ends of justice and righteousness, will often

be in as great a perplexity as Pilate, and will come to as ruinous if

not to so appalling an end.

In this would-be equitable Roman governor, exhibiting his weakness to

the people and helplessly exclaiming, "What shall I do with Jesus which

is called Christ?"[27] we see the predicament of many who are suddenly

confronted with Christ--disconcerted as they are to have such a prisoner

thrown on their hands, and wishing that anything had turned up rather

than a necessity for answering this question, What shall I do with

Jesus? Probably when Jesus was led by the vacillating Pilate out and in,

back and forward, examined and re-examined, acquitted, scourged,

defended, and abandoned to His enemies, some pity for His judge mingled

with other feelings in His mind. This was altogether too great a case

for a man like Pilate, fit enough to try men like Barabbas and to keep

the turbulent Galileans in order. What unhappy fate, he might afterwards

think, had brought this mysterious Prisoner to his judgment-seat, and

for ever linked in such unhappy relation his name to the Name that is

above every name? Never with more disastrous results did the resistless

stream of time bring together and clash together the earthen and the

brazen pitcher. Never before had such a prisoner stood at any judge's

bar. Roman governors and emperors had been called to doom or to acquit

kings and potentates of all degrees and to determine every kind of

question, forbidding this or that religion, extirpating old dynasties,

altering old landmarks, making history in its largest dimensions; but

Pilate was summoned to adjudicate in a case that seemed of no

consequence at all, yet really eclipsed in its importance all other

cases put together.

Nothing could save Pilate from the responsibility attaching to his

connection with Jesus, and nothing can save us from the responsibility

of determining what judgment we are to pronounce on this same Person.

It may seem to us an unfortunate predicament we are placed in; we may

resent being called upon to do anything decided in a matter where our

convictions so conflict with our desires; we may inwardly protest

against human life being obstructed and disturbed by choices that are so

pressing and so difficult and with issues so incalculably serious. But

second thoughts assure us that to be confronted with Christ is in truth

far from being an unfortunate predicament, and that to be compelled to

decisions which determine our whole after-course and allow fullest

expression of our own will and spiritual affinities is our true glory.

Christ stands patiently awaiting our decision, maintaining His

inalienable majesty, but submitting Himself to every test we care to

apply, claiming only to be the King of the truth by whom we are admitted

into that sole eternal kingdom. It has come to be our turn, as it came

to be Pilate's, to decide upon His claims and to act upon our

decision--to recognise that we men have to do, not merely with pleasure

and place, with earthly rewards and relations, but above all with the

truth, with that which gives eternal significance to all these present

things, with the truth about human life, with the truth embodied for us

in Christ's person and speaking intelligibly to us through His lips,

with God manifest in the flesh. Are we to take part with Him when He

calls us to glory and to virtue, to the truth and to eternal life, or

yielding to some present pressure the world puts upon us attempt some

futile compromise and so renounce our birthright?

Could Pilate really persuade himself he made everything right with a

basin of water and a theatrical transference of his responsibility to

the Jews? Could he persuade himself that by merely giving up the

contest he was playing the part of a judge and of a man? Could he

persuade himself that the mere words, "I am innocent of the blood of

this righteous man: see ye to it," altered his relation to the death of

Christ? No doubt he did. There is nothing commoner than for a man to

think himself forced when it is his own fear or wickedness that is his

only compulsion. Would every man in Pilate's circumstances have felt

himself forced to surrender Jesus to the Jews? Would even a Gallio or a

Claudius Lysias have done so? But Pilate's past history made him

powerless. Had he not feared exposure, he would have marched his cohort

across the square and cleared it of the mob and defied the Sanhedrim. It

was not because he thought the Jewish law had any true right to demand

Christ's death, but merely because the Jews threatened to report him as

conniving at rebellion, that he yielded Christ to them; and to seek to

lay the blame on those who made it difficult to do the right thing was

both unmanly and futile. The Jews were at least willing to take their

share of the blame, dreadful in its results as that proved to be.

Fairly to apportion blame where there are two consenting parties to a

wickedness is for us, in many cases, impossible; and what we have to do

is to beware of shifting blame from ourselves to our circumstances or to

other people. However galling it is to find ourselves mixed up with

transactions which turn out to be shameful, or to discover that some

vacillation or imbecility on our part has made us partakers in sin, it

is idle and worse to wash our hands ostentatiously and try to persuade

ourselves we have no guilt in the matter. The fact that we have been

brought in contact with unjust, cruel, heartless, fraudulent,

unscrupulous, worldly, passionate people may explain many of our sins,

but it does not excuse them. Other people in our circumstances would not

have done what we have done; they would have acted a stronger, manlier,

more generous part. And if we have sinned, it only adds to our guilt and

encourages our weakness to profess innocence now and transfer to some

other party the disgrace that belongs to ourselves. Nothing short of

physical compulsion can excuse wrong-doing.

The calmness and dignity with which Jesus passed through this ordeal,

alone self-possessed, while all around Him were beside themselves, so

impressed Pilate that he not only felt guilty in giving Him up to the

Jews, but did not think it impossible that He might be the Son of God.

But what is perhaps even more striking in this scene is the directness

with which all these evil passions of men--fear, and self-interest, and

injustice, and hate--are guided to an end fraught with blessing.

Goodness finds in the most adverse circumstances material for its

purposes. We are apt in such circumstances to despair and act as if

there were never to be a triumph of goodness; but the little seed of

good that one individual can contribute even by hopeful and patient

submission is that which survives and produces good in perpetuity, while

the passion and the hate and the worldliness cease. In so wild a scene

what availed it, we might have said, that one Person kept His

steadfastness and rose superior to the surrounding wickedness? But the

event showed that it did avail. All the rest was scaffolding that fell

away out of sight, and this solitary integrity remains as the enduring

monument. In our measure we must pass through similar ordeals, times

when it seems vain to contend, useless to hope. When all we have done

seems to be lost, when our way is hid and no further step is visible,

when all the waves and billows of an ungodly world seem to threaten with

extinction the little good we have cherished, then must we remember this

calm, majestic Prisoner, bound in the midst of a frantic and

blood-thirsty mob, yet superior to it because He was living in God.