The deputation refuse to cate with from fear ment, the vehement earnestness of their persecution. Jesus was accused of assuming the title of King of the Jews, and with an intention of throwing off the Roman yoke. But, however little Pilate may have heard or understood his doctrines, the conduct and demeanour of Christ were so utterly at variance with such a charge; the only intelligible article in the accusation, his imputed prohibition of the payment of tribute, so unsupported by proof, as to bear no weight. This redoubted king had been seized by the emissaries of the Sanhedrin, perhaps Roman soldiers placed under their orders; had been conveyed without resistance through the city; his few adherents, mostly unarmed peasants, had fled at the instant of his capture; not the slightest tumultuary movement had taken place during his examination before the High Priest, and the popular feeling seemed rather at present incensed against him than inclined to take his part. To the mind of Pilate, indeed, accustomed to the disconnection of religion and morality; the more striking contradiction in the concommuni- duct of the Jewish rulers may not have appeared altogether so exPilate traordinary. At the moment when they were violating the great of legal eternal and immutable principles of all religion, and infringing on defile- one of the positive commandments of their law, by persecuting to death an innocent man, they were withholden by religious scruple from entering the dwelling of Pilate; they were endangering the success of their cause, lest this intercourse with the unclean stranger should exclude them from the worship of their God - a worship for which they contracted no disqualifying defilement by this deed of blood. The deputation stood without the hall of Pilate (1); and not even their animosity against Jesus could induce them to depart from that superstitious usage, to lend the weight of their personal appearance to the solemn accusation, or, at all events, to deprive the hated object of their persecution of any advantage which he might receive from undergoing his examination without being confronted with his accusers. Pilate seems to have paid so much respect to their usages, that he went out to receive their charge, and to inquire the nature of the crime for which Jesus was denounced. Examina The simple question put to Jesus, on his first interrogatory before Pilate, was whether he claimed the title of King of the Jews (2). The answer of Jesus may be considered as an appeal to the justice and right feeling of the governor. "As Roman prefect, have your tion before any cause for suspecting me of ambitious or insurrectionary designs; do you entertain the least apprehension of my seditious demeanour ; or are you not rather adopting the suggestions of my enemies, and lending yourself to their unwarranted animosity?" Pilate disclaims all communion with the passions or the prejudices of the Jewish Pilate. (1) John, xviii. 28. (2) John, xviii. 83-37. rulers; but Jesus had been brought before him, denounced as a dangerous disturber of the public peace, and he was officially bound to take cognisance of such a charge. In the rest of the defence of Christ, the only part intelligible to Pilate would be the unanswerable appeal to the peaceful conduct of his followers. When Jesus asserted that he was a king, yet evidently implied a moral or religious sense in his use of the term, Pilate might attribute a vague meaning to his language, from the Stoic axiom, I am a king when I rule myself (1); and thus give a sense to that which otherwise would have sounded in his ears like unintelligible mysticism. His perplexity, however, must have been greatly increased when Jesus, in this perilous hour, when his life trembled, at it were, on the balance, declared that the object of his birth and of his life was the establishment of "the truth.' "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth, Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice." That the peace of a nation or the life of an individual should be endangered on account of the truth or falsehood of any system of speculative opinions, was so diametrically opposite to the general opinion and feeling of the Roman world, that Pilate, either in contemptuous mockery, or with the merciful design of showing the utter harmlessness and insignificance of such points, inquired what he meant by truth,-what truth had to do with the present question, with a question of life and death, with a capital charge brought by the national council before the supreme tribunal. Apparently despairing, on one side, of bringing him, whom he seems to have considered a blameless enthusiast, to his senses; on the other, unwilling to attach so much importance to what appeared to him in so different a light, he wished at once to put an end to the whole affair. He abruptly left Jesus, and went out again to the Jewish deputation at the gate, (now perhaps increased by a greater number of the Sanhedrin,) and declared his conviction of the innocence of Jesus. At this unexpected turn, the Sanhedrin burst into a furious cla- Clamours mour, reiterated their vague, perhaps contradictory, and to the ears cusers. of Pilate unintelligible or insignificant charges, and seemed determined to press the conviction with implacable animosity. Pilate turned to Jesus, who had been led out, to demand his answer to these charges. Jesus stood collected, but silent, and the astonishment of Pilate was still further heightened. The only accusation which seemed to bear any meaning, imputed to Jesus the raising tumultuous meetings of the people throughout the country, from Judæa to Galilee (2). This incidental mention of Galilee, made perhaps with an invidious design of awakening in the mind of the go Pilate en deavours to save Jesus. of the ac Si recte facies. Epist. i. 1. 59. Jesus sent to Herod. back with vernor the remembrance of the turbulent character of that people, suggested to Pilate a course by which he might rid himself of the embarrassment and responsibility of this strange transaction. It has been conjectured, not witho ut probability, that the massacre of Herod's subjects was the cause of the enmity that existed between the tetrarch and the Roman governor. Pilate had now an opportunity at once to avoid an occurrence of the same nature, in which he had no desire to be implicated, and to make overtures of reconciliation to the native sovereign. He was indifferent about the fate of Jesus, provided he could shake off all actual concern in his death; or he might suppose that Herod, uninfected with the inexplicable enmity of the chief priests, might be inclined to protect his innocent subject (1). The fame of Jesus had already excited the curiosity of Herod, but his curiosity was rather that which sought amusement or excitement from the powers of an extraordinary wonder-worker, than that which looked for information or improvement from a wise moral, or a divinely-commissioned religious, teacher. The circumstances of the interview, which probably took place in the presence of the tetrarch and his courtiers, and into which none of the disciples of Jesus could find their way, are not related. The investigation was long; but Jesus maintained his usual unruffled silence, and at the close of the examination, he was sent back to Pilate. By Jesus sent the murder of John, Herod had incurred deep and lasting unpopuinsult. larity; he might be unwilling to increase his character for cruelty by the same conduct towards Jesus, against whom, as he had not the same private reasons for requiring his support, he had not the same bitterness of personal animosity; nor was his sovereignty, as has before been observed, endangered in the same manner as that of the chief priests, by the progress of Jesus. Herod therefore might treat with derision what appeared to him an harmless assumption of royalty, and determine to effect, by contempt and contumely, that degradation of Jesus in the estimation of the people which his more cruel measures in the case of John had failed to accomplish. With his connivance, therefore, if not under his instructions, his soldiers (perhaps some of them, as those of his father had been, foreigners, Gaulish or Thracian barbarians) were permitted or encouraged in every kind of cruel and wanton insult. They clothed him, in mockery of his royal title, in a purple robe, and so escorted him back to Pilate, who, if he occupied part of the Herodion, not the Antonia, was close at hand, only in a different quarter of the same extensive palace. The refusal of Herod to take cognisance of the charge renewed the embarrassment of Pilate, but a way yet seemed open to extricate (1) Luke, xxiii. 5-12. himself from his difficulty. There was a custom, that in honour of the great festival, the Passover, a prisoner should be set at liberty at the request of the people (1). The multitude had already become clamorous for their annual privilege. Among the half-robbers, halfinsurgents, who had so long infested the province of Judæa and the whole of Palestine, there was a celebrated bandit, named Barabbas, Barabbas. who, probably in some insurrectionary tumult, had been guilty of murder. Of the extent of his crime we are ignorant; but Pilate, by selecting the worst case, that which the people could not but consider the most atrocious and offensive to the Roman government, might desire to force them, as it were, to demand the release of Jesus. Barabbas had been undeniably guilty of those overt acts of insubordination, which they endeavoured to infer as necessary consequences of the teaching of Jesus. He came forth, therefore, to the outside of his prætorium, and having declared that neither himself nor Herod could discover any real guilt in the prisoner who had been brought before them, he appealed to them to choose between the condemned insurgent and murderer, and the blameless prophet of Nazareth. The High Priests had now wrought the people to madness, and had most likely crowded the courts round Pilate's quarters with their most zealous and devoted partizans. The voice of the Governor was drowned with an instantaneous burst of acclamation, demanding the release of Barabbas. Pilate made yet another ineffectual attempt to save the life of the innocent man. He thought by some punishment, short of death, if not to awaken the compassion, to satisfy the animosity, of the people (2). The person of Jesus was given up to the lictors, and scourging with rods, the common Roman punishment for minor offences, was inflicted with merciless severity. The soldiers platted a crown of thorns, or, as is thought, of some prickly plant, with as it is scarcely conceivable that life could have endured if the tem- thorns and ples had been deeply pierced by a circle of thorns (3). In this pi- the people. tiable state Jesus was again led forth, bleeding with the scourge, his brow throbbing with the pointed crown; and drest in the purple robe of mockery to make the last vain appeal to the compassion, the humanity, of the people. The wild and furious cries of "crucify him, crucify him," broke out on all sides. In vain Pilate commanded them to be the executioners of their own sentence, and reasserted his conviction of the innocence of Jesus. In vain he accompanied his assertion by the significant action of washing his hands in the public view, as if to show that he would contract no guilt or defilement from the blood of a blameless man (4). He was (1) Matt. xxvii. 15-20.; Mark, xv. 6-11.; Luke, xxiii. 13-19.; John, xviii. 39. (2) Luke, xxiii. 16.; John, xix. 1—5. (3) It should seem, says Grotius, that the mockery was more intended than the pain. Some suppose the plant, the naba or nabka of the Ara- (4) Matt. xxvii. 24, 25. Jesus crowned shown to demand Interces The people answered by the awful imprecation, "His blood be upon us, and his cruci- upon our children." The deputies of the Sanhedrin pressed more fixion. carnestly the capital charge of blasphemy-" He had made himself the Son of God (1)." This inexplicable accusation still more shook the resolution of Pilate, who, perhaps at this instant, was further agitated by a message from his wife. Claudia Procula (the law which prohibited the wives of the provincial rulers from accompanying sion of Pi. their husbands to the seat of their governments now having fallen late's wife. into disuse) had been permitted to reside with her husband Pilate in Palestine (2). The stern justice of the Romans had guarded by this law against the baneful effects of female influence. In this instance, had Pilate listened to the humaner counsels of his wife, from what a load of guilt would he have delivered his own couscience and his province. Aware of the proceedings which had occupied Pilate during the whole night; perhaps in some way better acquainted with the character of Jesus, she had gone to rest; but her sleep, her morning slumbers, when visions were supposed to be more than ordinarily true, were disturbed by dreams of the innocence of Jesus, and the injustice and inhumanity to which her husband might lend his authority. The prisoner was withdrawn into the guard-room, and Pilate endeavoured to obtain some explanation of the meaning of this new charge from Jesus himself. He made no answer, and Pilate appealed to his fears, reminding him that his life and death depended on the power of the Prefect. Jesus replied, that his life was only in the power of divine Providence, by whose permission alone Pilate enjoyed a temporary authority (3). But touched, it may seem, by the exertions of Pilate to save him, with all his accustomed gentleLast inter- ness he declares Pilate guiltless of his blood, in comparison with his of Jesus. betrayers and persecutors among his own countrymen. This speech rogatory still further moved Pilate in his favour. But the justice and the compassion of the Roman gave way at once before the fear of weakening his interest, or endangering his personal safety, with his imperial master. He made one effort more to work on the implacable people; he was answered with the same furious exclamations, and with menaces of more alarming import. They accused him of indifference to the stability of the imperial power: "Thou art not Cæsar's friend (4): "they threatened to report his conduct, in thus allowing the title of royalty to be assumed with impunity, to the reigning Cæsar. That Cæsar was the dark and jealous Tiberius. Up to this period the Jewish nation, when they had complained of the tyranny of their native sovereigns, had ever obtained a favourable (1) John, xix. 7. (2) Matt. xxvii. 19-23. This law had fallen into neglect in the time of Augustus; during the reign of Tiberius it was openly infringed, and the motion of Cæcina in the Senate to put it more strictly in force, produced no effect. Tac. Ann. iii. 33. (3) John, xix. 8-11. |