There are some effects of the living power of the Holy Spirit
which are invariable. When He dwells with a Christian soul, He
continually speaks in the voice of conscience; He speaks in the
voice of prayer. He produces with the ease of a natural process,
without effort, without the taint of self-consciousness, "love,
joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness,
temperance." Some of these graces must be found where He makes His
home. There is no mistaking the atmosphere of His presence: in its
main features it is the same now as in the days of the apostles.
Just as in natural morality the main elements of "goodness" do not
change; so in religious life, spirituality is, amid great varieties
of detail, yet, in its leading constituent features, the same thing
from one generation to another. But in the life of the individual
Christian, or in that of the Church, there is legitimate room for
irregular and exceptional forms of activity or excellence. Natural
society is not strengthened by the stern repression of all that is
peculiar in individual thought or practise; and this is not less
true of spiritual or religious society. From the first, high forms
of Christian excellence have often been associated with unconscious
eccentricity. The eccentricity must be unconscious, because
consciousness of eccentricity at once reduces it to a form of vanity
which is entirely inconsistent with Christian excellence. How many
excellent Christians have been eccentric, deviating more or less
from the conventional type of goodness which has been recognized
by contemporary religious opinion. They pass away, and when they
are gone men do justice to their characters; but while they are
still with us how hard do many of us find it to remember that there
may be a higher reason for their peculiarities than we think. We
know not the full purpose of each saintly life in the designs of
Providence; we know not much of the depths and heights whence it
draws its inspirations; we can not tell whence it cometh or whither
it goeth. Only we know that He whose workmanship it is bloweth where
He listeth; and this naturally leads us to remark the practical
interpretation which the Holy Spirit often puts upon our Lord's
words by selecting as His chosen workmen those who seem to be least
fitted by nature for such high service. The apostle has told us how
in the first age He set Himself to defeat human anticipations. "Not
many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble,
are called"; learned academies, powerful connections, gentle blood
did little enough for the gospel in the days when it won its first
and greatest victories. The Holy Spirit, as Nicodemus knew, passed
by the varied learning and high station of the Sanhedrin, and
breathed where He listed on the peasants of Galilee; He breathed
on them a power which would shake the world. And thus has it been
again and again in the generations which have followed. When the
great Aquinas was a student of philosophy under Albertus Magnus at
Cologne, he was known among his contemporaries as "the dumb Ox"; so
little did they divine what was to be his place in the theology of
Western Christendom. And to those of us who can look back upon the
memories of this University for a quarter of a century or more, few
things appear more remarkable than the surprizes which the later
lives of men constantly afford; sometimes it is a failure of early
natural promise, but more often a rich development of intellectual
and practical capacity where there had seemed to be no promise at
all. We can remember, perhaps, some dull quiet man who seemed to
be without a ray of genius, or, stranger still, without anything
interesting or marked in character, but who now exerts, and most
legitimately, the widest influence for good, and whose name is
repeated by thousands with grateful respect. Or we can call to mind
another whose whole mind was given to what was frivolous, or even
degrading, and who now is a leader in everything that elevates and
improves his fellows. The secret of these transfigurations is ever
the same. In those days these men did not yet see their way; they
were like travelers through the woods at night, when the sky is
hidden and all things seem to be other than they are.
Since then the sun has risen and all has changed. The creed of the
Church of Christ, in its beauty and its power, has been flashed by
the Divine Spirit upon their hearts and understandings; and they are
other men. They have seen that there is something worth living for
in earnest; that God, the soul, the future, are immense realities,
compared with which all else is tame and insignificant. They have
learned something of that personal love of our crucified Lord, which
is itself a moral and religious force of the highest order, and
which has carried them forwards without their knowing it. And what
has been will assuredly repeat itself.
W. M. TAYLOR
CHRIST BEFORE PILATE--PILATE BEFORE CHRIST
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
William Mackergo Taylor, Congregational divine, was born at
Kilmarnock, Scotland, in 1829. He was for many years pastor of the
Broadway Tabernacle, New York. He had an impressive presence and
his delivery was marked by a magnetic earnestness. During the first
ten years of his ministry he spoke memoriter, but subsequently
wrote out his sermons with detailed care and preached them from
manuscript, but their delivery was without the freedom and freshness
of extemporaneous address. He came to regret this, for he said: "If
I might speak from my own experience I would say, that memoriter
preaching is the method which has the greatest advantages, with the
fewest disadvantages." He died in 1895.
W. M. TAYLOR 1829-1895
CHRIST BEFORE PILATE--PILATE BEFORE CHRIST[5]
[5] Reprinted by permission from "Contrary Winds and other Sermons,"
by William M. Taylor, D.D., copyrighted, 1883, by A. C. Armstrong &
Son.
_Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do, then, with Jesus,
which is called Christ?_--Matthew xxvii., 22.
During my late visit to my native land I had the great enjoyment
of seeing, and somewhat carefully studying, Munkacsy's famous
picture of "Christ Before Pilate." Rarely, if ever, had I been so
much moved by a work of art; and I propose to give, as nearly as I
can recall it, the sermon which it reached to me as I sat silently
contemplating the figures, which, even as I looked at them, seemed
to grow before me into life.
But, first, I must try to describe to you the picture itself. The
canvas is large, and the figures, all of which are on the line of
sight, are of life size. The scene is in the pavement or open court
before the governor's palace, which was called in the Hebrew tongue
Gabbatha, and in which, after all his efforts to wriggle out of the
responsibility of dealing with the case, Pilate ultimately gave up
Jesus to be crucified. At one end of the court, on a raised bench,
and drest in a white toga, Pilate sits. On either side of him are
Jews, each of whom has a marked and special individuality. The two
on his left are gazing with intense eagerness at Christ. They are
evidently puzzled, and know not well what to make of the mysterious
prisoner. On his right, standing on one of the seats, and with his
back against the wall, is a Scribe, whose countenance is expressive
of uttermost contempt, and just in front of this haughty fellow
are some Pharisees, one of whom is on his feet, and passionately
urging that Jesus should be put to death, presumably on the ground
that, if Pilate should let Him go, he would make it evident that he
was not Cæsar's friend. Before them again is a usurer, sleek, fat
and self-satisfied, clearly taking great comfort to himself in the
assurance that, however the matter may be settled, his well-filled
money-bags will be undisturbed. Beyond him stands the Christ in a
robe of seamless white, and with His wrists firmly bound; while
behind, kept in place by a Roman soldier, standing with his back to
the spectator, and making a barricade with his spear, which he holds
horizontally, is a motley group of onlookers, not unlike that which
we may still see any day in one of our criminal courts. Of these,
one more furious than the rest is wildly gesticulating, and crying,
as we may judge from his whole attitude, "Crucify Him! crucify Him!"
and another, a little to the Savior's left, but in the second row
behind Him, is leaning forward with mockery in his leering look, and
making almost as if he would spit upon the saintly one. There is but
one really compassionate face in the crowd, and that is a face of a
woman who, with an infant in her arms, most fitly represents those
gentle daughters of Jerusalem who followed Jesus to Calvary with
tears. Then, over the heads of the on-lookers, and out of the upper
part of the doorway into the court, we get a glimpse of the quiet
light of the morning as it sleeps upon the walls and turrets of the
adjacent buildings. All these figures are so distinctly seen that
you feel you could recognize them again if you met them anywhere;
and a strange sense of reality comes upon you as you look at them,
so that you forget that they are only painted, and imagine that you
are gazing on living and breathing men.
But, as you sit awhile and look on, you gradually lose all
consciousness of the presence of the mere on-lookers and find your
interest concentrated on these two white-robed ones, as if they
were the only figures before you. The pose of Christ is admirable.
It is repose blended with dignity; self-possession rising into
majesty. There is no agitation or confusion; no fear or misgiving;
but, instead, the calm nobleness of Him who has just been saying,
"Thou couldst have no power at all against me, except it were given
thee from above; therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the
greater sin." The face alone disappoints. Perhaps that may be owing
to the lofty ideal we have of the divine Man, so that no picture
of our Lord would entirely please. But tho the painter has wisely
abandoned the halo, and all similar conventionalisms of art, and has
delineated a real man, for all which he is to be highly commended,
yet the eyes which look so steadily at Pilate, as if they were
looking him through, seem to me to be cold, keen, and condemnatory,
rather than compassionate and sad. It is a conception of the Lord
of the same sort as that of Doré, in his well-known picture of the
leaving of the Prætorium, and the eyes have not in them that deep
well of tenderness out of which came the tears which He shed over
Jerusalem, and which we expect to see in them when He is looking at
the hopeless struggle of a soul which will not accept His aid. It
is said that the artist, dissatisfied with his first attempt, has
painted the Christ face twice; but this, also, is a partial failure,
and here, so at least it seemed to me as I looked upon it, is the
one defect in his noble work. But if there is this defect, it is one
which it shares with every other effort that human art has made to
delineate the Lord. The Pilate, however, is well-nigh faultless.
Here is a great, strong man, the representative of the mightiest
empire the world has ever seen, with a head indicating intellectual
force, and a face, especially in its lower part, suggestive of
sensual indulgence. There is ordinarily no want of firmness in
him, as we may see from the general set of his features; but now
there is in his countenance a marvelous mixture of humiliation and
irresolution. He cannot lift his eyes to meet the gaze of Christ;
and while one of his hands is nervously clutching at his robe he
is looking sadly into the other, whose fingers, even as we look
at them, almost seem to twitch with perplexed irresolution. He is
clearly pondering for himself the question which a few moments
before he had addrest to the multitude, "What shall I do with
Jesus which is called Christ?" He is annoyed that the case has
been brought to him at all, and as he feels himself drifting on,
against his own better judgment, toward yielding to the clamor of
the multitude, he falls mightily in his own conceit, and begins to
despise himself. He would, at that moment, give, oh, how much! to
be rid of the responsibility of dealing with the Christ, but he
cannot evade it; and so he sits there, drifting on to what he knows
is a wrong decision, the very incarnation of the feeling which his
own national poet described when he said, "I see and approve the
better course; I follow the worse." Thus, as we look at these two,
we begin to discover that it was not Christ that was before Pilate
so much as Pilate was before Christ. His was the testing experience.
His was the trial; his too, alas! was the degradation; and at that
coming day when the places shall be reversed, when Christ shall be
on the judgment seat, and Pilate at the bar, there will still be
that deep self-condemnation which the painter here has fixt upon
his countenance. It is a marvelous picture, in many respects the
most remarkable I ever looked upon, and, even from this imperfect
description of it, you will easily understand how, as I sat intent
before it, it stirred my soul to the very depths.
But now, with this portrayal of the scene before us let us see if
we can account, first, for the hesitation of Pilate to give up the
Lord, and then for his final yielding to the clamor of the people.
Why all this reluctance on his part to send Jesus to the cross? He
was not usually so scrupulous. A human life more or less gave him
generally very little concern. He had all a Roman's indifference
for the comfort of those who stood in any respect in his way; and
had no compunction, as we know, in mingling the blood of certain
turbulent Jews with the very sacrifices which at the moment they
were offering. Had Christ been a Roman citizen, indeed, he would
most likely have been very watchful over His safety, for in regard
to all such the imperial law was peculiarly strict, but the life
of a mere Jew was a very small thing in his estimation. Wherefore,
then, this unwonted squeamishness of conscience? It was the result
of a combination of particulars, each of which had a special force
of its own, and the aggregate of which so wrought upon his mind that
he was brought thereby to a stand.
There was, in the first place, the peculiar character of the
prisoner. A very slight examination had been sufficient to convince
him that Christ was innocent of the charge which had been brought
against Him. But in the course of that examination much more than
the innocence of Christ had come to view. He had manifested a
dignified patience altogether unlike anything that Pilate had ever
seen; and His answers to certain questions had been so strangely
suggestive of something higher and nobler than even the most
exalted earthly philosophy that he could not look upon Him as a
common prisoner. He was no mere fanatic; neither was He after the
pattern of any existing school, whether Jewish, Greek, or Roman.
There was about Him an "other-worldliness" which brought those
near Him into close proximity, for the time, with the unseen; and
an elevation which lifted Him above the tumult that was howling
for His destruction. Probably Pilate could not have described
it to himself, but there was something which he felt unusual and
exceptional in this man, marking Him out from every other he ever
had before him, and constraining him to take a special interest in
His case. Add to this that his wife had sent to him that singular
message--"Have thou nothing to do with that just man, for I have
suffered many things this day in a dream because of him,"--a message
which, in those days of mingled scepticism and superstition--for the
two always go hand in hand--must have produced a deep impression on
his mind. Moreover, there seemed some fatality about the case. He
had tried to roll it over upon Herod, but that wily monarch sent the
prisoner back upon his hands. He had attempted to release Him, as
the Passover prisoner for the year, but neither was there any outlet
for him in that, for the people had preferred Barabbas. And so the
responsibility had come again to his own door, and could not be
passed on to another. Still again, he saw that the Jews were acting
most hypocritically in the matter. It was a new thing for them to be
zealous for the honor of Cæsar, and he could easily see through the
mask they wore into the envy and malice which were the motives for
their conduct. The deeper he went into the case he discovered only
the more reason for resisting their importunity, and, however, he
looked at it, his plain duty was to set the prisoner free.
Why then, again we ask, was his perplexity? The answer is suggested
by the taunt of the Jews, "If thou let this man go thou art not
Cæsar's friend; whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against
Cæsar." He foresaw that if he resisted the will of the rulers he
would make them his enemies, and so provoke them to complain of
him to the emperor, who would then institute an inquiry into the
administration of his office--and that he was not prepared to face.
He had done things as a governor which would not bear the light,
and so at the crisis of his life he was fettered by deeds of the
past from doing that which he felt to be the duty of the present.
You may, perhaps, remember that expression of the prophet, which
thus reads in the margin: "Their doings will not suffer them to turn
unto their God": and that other, which affirms, concerning Israel:
"Their own doings have beset them about." Now these descriptions
most accurately define the cause of Pilate's perplexity here. His
conduct in the past had been such that he had not the courage to
take any course which might lead to an investigation of that. If
he could deliver Christ without provoking that, then he would most
cheerfully do so; but if by delivering Christ he would provoke that,
then Christ must be given up to the cross. Hence his perplexity
at the first, and hence, also, his yielding in the end. His past
misdeeds had put him virtually into the power of those who were
now so eager for the condemnation of the Christ. On three several
occasions his arbitrariness had been such as all but to instigate
a rebellion among the people, and his cruelty and contempt for
justice, when he had a personal end to gain, were sure, upon appeal
to the emperor, to be severely punished; so to save himself from
banishment and disgrace, if not even death, he delivered over Jesus
to the will of the Jews. He wished to do right in this case more
than ever he had wished before; there was something about it which
in his view made it more important that he should do right now than
ever before; but through all his past official life he had, by his
enormities and oppressions, been unconsciously weaving round himself
a net, in the meshes of which he was now inextricably caught. His
guilty conscience made him a coward at the very time when most of
all he wanted to be brave. He had come to his "narrow place," where
he could turn neither to the right hand nor to the left, but must
face the naked alternative "yes" or "no"; and he fell because in his
former life, when he was thinking of no such ordeal, he had sold
himself by his evil deeds into the power of the enemy.
Now, what a lesson there is in all this for us! Men think that
they may live for the time being as they please, and that at a
convenient venient season they can repent and turn to God. But the
present is conditioning the future, and making it either possible
or the reverse for us to do right in the future. He who neglects
the laws of health every day, and lives in intemperance and excess
of all kinds, is only making it absolutely certain that when fever
lays him low he will die, for he has eaten out the strength of
his constitution by his follies. And, in the same way, he who
sets all morality at defiance in his ordinary conduct only makes
it inevitable that when his convenient season does come, when his
time of privilege and testing does arrive, he will fail to rise to
the occasion, and be swept away into perdition. The tenor of our
ordinary life determines how we shall pass through exceptional and
crucial occasions, therefore let us bring that up to the highest
level by doing everything as unto God, and then we shall be ready
for any emergency.
Nor let me forget to add here, that in spite of all his efforts
to keep back investigation, Pilate's day of reckoning with the
emperor did come. The Jews complained of him after all, in spite of
his yielding to them now; and as the result he was banished, and
afterwards, so tradition says, he committed suicide. Thus the ordeal
and the disgrace came, notwithstanding all he did to avert them,
and he had not under them the solace which he might have enjoyed
if only he had stood firm on this great and memorable occasion.
Therefore let us all, and especially the young, take to ourselves,
as the first lesson from this deeply interesting history, that we
should be careful not to hamper ourselves for the discharge of duty
in the future by guilt of the present. By our conduct now we are
either coiling cords around us which shall hold us fast at the very
time when we most desire to be free, or we are forming and fostering
a strength of character which, through God, will triumph over every
temptation. If "to be weak is to be miserable," it is no less true
that to be guilty is to be weak. Preserve yourselves, therefore,
from this danger, and seek above all other things to keep your
consciences clean; then when you will need all your strength for a
crisis, you will not sit, like Pilate here, in nervous perplexity
bemoaning your helplessness even while you yield to the adversary;
but you will shake the temptation from you with as much ease as the
eagle shakes the dewdrop from his wing. Keep yourselves pure: so
shall your youth be full of happiness, and you shall go forth out
of it with no encumbering past to clog the wheels of your endeavor.
How happy he whose youth thus leaves him with a smile and sends him
forth upon the duties of manhood with a benediction! But he, how
miserable! whose early years heap bitter maledictions on his head,
and push him forward into active life with a conscience already
laden with guilt, and a soul as weak before temptation as a reed is
before the wind.