Pilate inquires as to the crime with which the Prisoner is charged. At first, the Jews do not give an explicit reply, only stating that they have already found Him guilty. Pilate catches at that. His weakness, so pitiably apparent throughout the whole proceedings, appears at this early stage. Desiring to shirk the responsibility of deciding the case--he would use the first apparent loophole of escape. Since the Jews have taken this case in hand, let them carry it through, dealing with it according to their law. They are not to be caught by that flattering suggestion. They know that they have not the power of life and death. Pilate would not let them kill Jesus. His proposal, which on the surface looks like the granting of a privilege, amounts to this, that they may exercise ecclesiastical discipline, excommunicate their Prisoner, or perhaps fling Him into jail, possibly scourge Him. But the worst of these punishments will not satisfy their determined hatred, or rid them of the haunting fear inspiring it, that Jesus will undermine their influence with the people. Nothing less than His death will put an end to that danger; so they thought, although the event proved that it was this very death of Christ that was to lead to the victory of Christianity over Judaism. This, however, even His own disciples could not foresee, much less could it enter into the minds of His enemies among the Jews.
Thwarted in his first attempt to escape, and compelled to try this difficult case, Pilate enters the palace where Jesus is kept under arrest, and questions Him. He has been informed that Jesus claims to be the king of the Jews. Is that so? Is the charge but a piece of malicious slander? If it is, there is an end of the matter. Pilate is not going to lend himself to humour the whim of those hateful Jews, whom he affects to despise while in his heart he is mortally afraid of them. There is nothing of the bearing of the violent insurgent in this calm peasant who stands before him. Surely this is some stupid mistake, or there is more Jewish malice in it than Pilate can fathom.
But the Roman magistrate soon discovers that he is dealing with no ordinary man. Jesus takes his measure in a moment. Pilate is a feeble creature, with no character, insincere, dishonest. He must be made to feel his littleness. We can imagine how our Lord would fix on him a penetrating gaze before which the shallow nature of the man would become apparent, as He asked whether this cross-examination was genuine, or whether Pilate was prompted to it; whether, as we should say, it was "a put-up affair"--"_Sayest thou this of thyself, or did others say it concerning Me_?" Picture the situation--the great marble palace, the representative of Imperial Rome clad in the purple robe of office, and seated in his chair on the dais, the surrounding officials and bodyguard; and then the peasant from Galilee, alone, unattended, undefended, come straight from insult and mockery in another court, and that after a night of mental agony. Observe how completely the relative position of judge and Prisoner are reversed, at least, to the eyes of the onlooker. Jesus calmly questions Pilate, calmly tells him of the limit of his power, and calmly claims the kinship for himself--there of all places--in the Roman governor"s residence, speaking to this governor himself, knowing that it must seal His own fate. The two powers are now face to face--the world-power of Rome, outwardly so imposing, but at this moment shrinking to insignificance, looking so vulgar, so mean, so sordid, so unreal, so essentially weak, in the person of the paltry governor; and the heavenly power, the power of truth and goodness, the Kingdom of G.o.d represented by the provincial Prisoner whose inherent dignity of Presence is seen to be all the more sublime for the contrast. And Pilate? How does he view this? He is manifestly disconcerted, but he tries to hide his awkwardness under a mask of Roman scorn. "_Am I a Jew_?" he exclaims, in a tone of measureless contempt. It is like the contempt of Agrippa when, in response to St Paul"s enthusiastic appeal and close home-thrust, he cried, "_With but little persuasion thou wouldest fain make me a Christian_!" Pilate reminds Jesus that He has been given up by His own people. Jews might be expected to stand by a fellow-Jew under the Roman tyranny. How comes it to pa.s.s that the Jewish people have brought a man of their own race to the foreign tribunal, prosecuting Him before this alien power, seeking His death from the hated Imperial government? What can He have done to bring about so unusual a situation? Pilate is perplexed; and the answer of Jesus does not clarify the magistrate"s ideas. It seems only more mystifying. Jesus describes His kingdom, so different from any inst.i.tution bearing the name that Pilate has ever heard of. It is not of the order of things in this world. If it were, of course Christ"s servants would fight, as do the servants of the claimants of earthly thrones. But they do not resort to violence. The kingdom and its methods of government are both unearthly. Pilate is interested, perhaps amused, with what now seem to him the fancies of a fanatical dreamer. He pursues the inquiry, we may suppose, with a smile on his lips, "_Art thou a king, then_?" he asked.
There is no ambiguity in his Prisoner"s reply. He is a king. This strange kingdom, not resting on any basis of earthly power, dispensing with fighting, with all that an army suggests, with force, is the very opposite to Pilate"s idea of a state. Rome was materialistic to the core. Her rule rested on brute force. The Empire, the _Imperium_, was the dominion of the _Imperator_, that is to say, of the commander-in-chief of the army. It was a military despotism.
Nominally the government was still republican, and the older and more peaceable provinces were administered by proconsuls, whose appointment rested with the senate, or was supposed by a legal fiction to rest with that body. But the newer and more troublesome provinces were governed as conquered territory directly by the emperor as the head of the army.
Now Judaea came in this latter division. Pontius Pilate and his superior, the Legate of Syria, were both directly responsible to Tiberius Caesar. Pilate was Caesar"s officer under military direction.
Military methods characterised the procurator"s rule. To a man placed as Pilate, the notion of a ruler independent of fighting supporters, and that in territory held down by force of arms, was simply absurd.
Our Lord"s further explanation seems to Pilate still more out of keeping with the notion of royalty. Jesus says He was born to be a king in order that He might bear witness to the truth. A king--truth--what have these two words in common, the one referring to the most real region, the other to the most ideal? To Pilate, the conjunction is absolutely incongruous. "_What is truth_?" he asks, as he turns away, too contemptuous to wait for an answer. This famous utterance has been quoted as a text for the anxious inquirer, and preachers have gravely set themselves to answer it. Jesus did nothing of the kind. Evidently it was not a serious inquiry. Pilate flung off the very idea of truth--a mere abstraction, nothing to a practical Roman. Still, though he was not seeking any answer to his question, by the very tone of it he suggested that he did not possess that gem which those who hold it prize above all things. "The Scepticism of Pilate"
is the t.i.tle of one of Robertson"s greatest sermons. The preacher traces it to four sources: indecision; falseness to his own convictions; the taint of the worldly temper of his day; and that priestly bigotry which forbids inquiry, and makes doubt a crime.
Pilate is the typical sceptic, who is worlds removed from the "honest"
doubter. Serious doubt, which is pained and anxious in the search of truth, is in essence belief, for it believes in the value of truth, if only truth can be discovered; but typical scepticism not only does not credit what the believer takes for truth, but despises it as not worth seeking. That is the fatal doubt, a doubt that eats into the soul as a moral canker.
Nevertheless, although what is of supreme value to Jesus is reckoned by Pilate as of no importance whatever, the cross-examination has satisfied the magistrate of the innocence of his Prisoner. His duty, then, is plain. He should acquit the innocent man. But he dare not do so immediately. That howling mob of Jews and those odious priests and Sadducees of the council are determined on the death of their victim.
Pilate has made himself well hated by the roughness of his government.
Nothing would please the Jews and their leaders better than to have some chance of impeaching him before his jealous master at Rome, on the charge of leniency to treason. Pilate quails before the terrible possibility. In face of it he simply dares not p.r.o.nounce a verdict of acquittal. Yet he means to do all he can to effect the escape of his Prisoner. His inbred instinct for justice prompts him to this; for the Romans cherished reverence for law, and even so corrupt a ruler as Pilate was not independent of the atmosphere of his race. Then it would be a bitter humiliation to let his judgment be overruled by those contemptible Jews. He would be heartily glad to confound and disappoint them. More than this, he had begun to feel some awakening interest in his remarkable Prisoner. He had come to the conclusion that Jesus was a harmless dreamer; but he had felt some faint shadow of the spell of the wonderful Personality. If only it could be managed with safety to himself, he would be glad to have Jesus set free.
Accordingly we now see Pilate resorting to a series of devices in order to escape from his vexatious dilemma. From this point his conduct opens out to us a curious study in psychological phenomena. The ingenuity of Pilate in resorting to one expedient after another, is very striking. Evidently he has keen wits, and he uses them with some agility. But it is all in vain. He is pushed from each of the positions he takes up by the same stubborn, relentless pressure which he invariably finds to be irresistible. The explanation is, that though he has intellect, he lacks will-power. On the other side there is not much need for intelligence, but there is the most obstinate will. The Jews possess a clear notion of what they want, and a set determination to have their way. In such a contest there is no doubt which side will win. When will is bitter against intellect, it is the latter that succ.u.mbs. The determined will forces itself through all opposition that rests only on intelligence, reasoning, contrivance.
Intellect does not count for nothing; allied to a strong will, as in Calvin, Cromwell, Napoleon, it helps to effect gigantic results. But in the sphere of action, it is will-power that tells in immediate results. Even here, reason may conquer stupid obstinacy in the long-run. But you must give it time; and you must have honesty of character. Neither condition was present in this case of Pilate. He had to decide promptly; and his moral nature was unsound. Such a man under such circ.u.mstances will never find his most cunning devices a match for the set determination of his opponents. So Pilate, feebly protesting, helplessly scheming, is pushed back step by step; and ultimately he concedes everything demanded of him, and the final issue is more humiliating to himself and more cruel to the innocent Prisoner whom he is trying to shield, than it would have been if he had yielded at the beginning. The real victim of this tragedy in the palace is not Jesus, it is the soul of Pilate. We seem to see a weak man being thrust down a steep place, resisting and catching at the shrubs and rocks that he pa.s.ses, but torn from his grasp of them and finally flung over the precipice.
Pilate"s first device was to send Jesus to Herod Antipas, who happened to be at Jerusalem at the time. It was a compliment to the frivolous "king of Galilee" to remit a Galilean prisoner to his judgment, and Pilate would gladly rid himself of the awkward case by this ingenious device. But it was useless, for the simple reason that Herod had no power of life and death in Jerusalem, and Pilate soon had his Prisoner on his hands again. Next he clutched at the custom of releasing a prisoner during the feast. Here was a chance for letting off Jesus without declaring Him innocent. But this suggestion was hopeless. If the Jews were set on effecting the death of Jesus, they would not give up their right to choose their prisoners to be released, and take at the dictation of Pilate the very man they wanted to have done to death.
They clamoured for an insurgent, Barabbas, a man caught red-handed in the very crime for which these hypocrites professed in their new-fledged loyalty to Caesar to be anxious to have Jesus executed.
The cynicism of their choice is palpable. By daring to make it, they show in what contempt they hold Pilate. The governor loses ground considerably by this false move. Then he tries to throw the blame of the murder of Jesus, which he sees he cannot prevent, on the Jews. A new motive urges him to escape from the responsibility of committing a judicial murder. His wife had sent a private message warning him to "_have nothing to do with that righteous man_." She had been much disturbed by a dream about him. Romans were slaves to omens and auguries, and the most materialistic of them felt some awe of dreams, although they had lost faith in real religion. Your confirmed sceptic is often slavishly superst.i.tious in the secret of his soul. It is a way the spiritual has of avenging itself on the man who openly flouts it. Boldly flung out of the window, it creeps back into the cellar and vexes the soul with petty tricks played on the subterranean consciousness. The man who expels his good angel is haunted by imps and elves. He who will not believe in G.o.d and despises truth succ.u.mbs to the message of a dream.
More anxious now than ever to escape responsibility, Pilate calls for water and publicly washes his hands, telling the Jews that the innocent blood will be on their heads. They accept the awful responsibility.
What do they care for the weak Roman"s scruples? He is doing their will, and of course no hand-washing can cleanse his conscience from the stain of guilty compliance.
Yet one thing more Pilate will do. He will scourge Jesus. Perhaps that may satisfy these savage Jews. For scourging was a savage punishment. The whip was loaded with lead and sharp fish-bones, and at every stroke the flesh was cut. Men often died under this severe treatment. Pilate had it inflicted on Jesus, knowing Him to be innocent; but hoping that, if He survived, no more might be required.
It was an abominable compromise. If Jesus were innocent--and Pilate knew He was innocent--He should have been set free unscathed, with apologies for a mistaken arrest. If he were guilty, of course he ought to receive the death-penalty for the crime of treason. Justice could allow of no middle course. But Pilate is not thinking of Justice. He only wants to escape the onus of killing an innocent man. Then he has Jesus brought forth, bleeding, in agony, His lacerated flesh exposed to the view of that heartless mult.i.tude. "_Behold the man_," says Pilate.
"Look at your victim; is not this enough?" If Pilate thought his appeal _ad misericordiam_ would touch those hardened sinners of the Sanhedrin, he was strangely mistaken. The sight of their victim in His agony only maddens them. They are like hounds who had tasted blood.
Like hounds, they "give tongue," and yell for His death. Pilate can resist no longer. He has played his last card, and it has been taken.
Thoroughly humiliated and quite helpless, he gives sentence, and so in spite of the governor"s desperate efforts to escape the stigma of his awful crime, it goes down to all the ages that Jesus was "crucified under Pontius Pilate."
BARABBAS
BY REV. J. G. GREENHOUGH, M.A.
"And they cried out all at once, saying, Away with this man, and release unto us Barabbas."--ST LUKE xxiii. 18.
You have heard a crowd of people cry out all at once. It is always impressive, it is sometimes very terrible, occasionally it is sublime.
It begins in a way that no one can explain. Somebody in the crowd utters a name, or e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.es a brief sentence. What happens? Often nothing at all. Men are not in the mood for it; it drops unnoticed, or provokes a jeer or two and is then forgotten. But sometimes the word falls like a spark on a ma.s.s of dry tinder--ten thousand hearts have been prepared for it--swift as a flash of lightning a sympathetic current pa.s.ses through the whole throng--ten thousand lips take up the cry. They are all carried away by contagion, magnetism, or madness, and a shout goes up enough to rend the sky. When some great and n.o.ble sentiment has laid hold of them, the shout of a people is one of the grandest things on earth; when it is some awful prejudice, unreasoning hatred, or cowardly terror that sways them, the shout is the most inhuman and h.e.l.lish thing on earth; and that was the character of the shout that was raised here.
The world has never forgotten that cry, and never will. To the very last the world will wonder how it should have come to be raised, and will condemn and pity the crowd of people who gave themselves up to it, for they were making a hero of the vilest stuff, and clamouring for the murder of the world"s one Divine man. There never was a more brutal and insane shout than that; never again can there be a choice so fatal and so suicidal as the choice they made: "_Away with this man, and release unto us Barabbas_."
If the thing had not happened, we should say it was impossible. It seems well-nigh incredible that human eyes and human hearts could be so blind. A story of this kind is food for the bitterest cynic. He who has the most utter contempt for the race to which he belongs might find here almost a justification of his scorn. Oh what a satire upon human nature, that a whole city full of people, men, women, mothers and daughters, had come to this pa.s.s that they could not discern which was the n.o.bler of these two--nay, thought that Barabbas was more deserving of their honour. One the very flower and crown of humanity, the express image of G.o.d; and the other a gaol bird, a notorious criminal, whose hands had been dyed red, and whose heart had been hardened by the shedding of blood. Well might those pitiful lips say, "_Father forgive them, for they know not what they do_."
Why did they do it? Why did they raise their voices for Barabbas?
The main answer is that men make their heroes as the heathen make G.o.ds, after their own image. There is no doubt that Barabbas was more to the taste of this people, more according to their heart, than Christ; or at least they thought he was; not quite their ideal man, perhaps, but certainly nearer to their ideal than the Christ whom they rejected. It may be that they had had no particular love for him until just now, possibly they had hardly thought of him at all; but now it was a question between this man and Jesus, and Jesus they did not want at any price. And their very hatred of the one made the other look beautiful.
Barabbas is our man, they said, and the more they said it the more they believed it; and each time the name was repeated it sounded sweeter, until they were all shouting it, nine-tenths of them because the others shouted it, and until they really made themselves believe that in this man they had got a veritable hero and hardly less than a G.o.d.
That is always what happens in such cases, the greater part begin shouting for no particular reason because a few others have led the way, and they end by believing that the man whom they are acclaiming is almost divine; yet it is certain that they elected this man on the whole because of the two he had more points in common with them, this poor despicable and very unheroic thing was the person whom they delighted to honour because they themselves were very unheroic and somewhat despicable. We cannot see the greatness of a truly great man unless there is just a bit of greatness in ourselves; Christ was too big and too divine to be seen and measured by their small and vulgar eyes. Barabbas was about their size, and they raised their voices for him.
We have had Carlyle"s words quoted to us a thousand times about heroes and hero-worship--how it is part of human nature to go after heroes and make them--how the world has always been given up to this worship, and always will be. We all revere and follow great men, or those whom we deem great, which is not quite the same thing. And it is a beautiful feature in human nature if it is wisely directed, if we can only set our hearts on the true heroes and follow them. It is not beautiful at all when we make our G.o.ds of clay, and shout ourselves hoa.r.s.e in exalting to the skies creatures as undivine and quite as small as we are.
Heroes are sometimes easily made to-day, and martyrs too. Modern martyrdom of the popular sort is about the least costly thing going.
It calls for no tears and blood, it can be gained on very easy terms.
You have only to break a law which you do not like, or your conscience does not approve, and to be brought up for it with an admiring crowd accompanying you, and to have a fine imposed, which is paid for, perhaps, by popular subscription--and lo, you are a martyr. I am not calling in question the thing itself. It may be both right and Christian to refuse obedience to a law on extreme occasions; but to call this martyrdom is extravagant and almost humorous.
It was not so in the olden time when the real martyrs were made. No, those martyrs were not delicately handled, but stripped and stoned to pieces, and burned, and there were no crowds to greet them with bravoes and caresses, but furious mobs clamouring for their blood. We have changed all that indeed, thank G.o.d: but they were heroes and martyrs indeed, and it sounds to me somewhat like a desecration of the word to apply it to men and even women who are good, probably brave in a way, but who win their crown of glory very cheaply indeed. If we are to have heroes, let us make sure that they possess some heroic stuff.
There is a vast amount of hero-worship to-day which reminds us too much of that shout for Barabbas. We are glorifying the wrong people; at least, most of us are. It is one of the deplorable weaknesses of the times, or if you like it better, it is one of the fashions or crazes to which human nature at times gives itself up. The heroes of the crowd, of the great ma.s.s of people, are not the good men, not the men of light and leading, not the men who are morally great or even intellectually great, not the men who are the strength and salt of a nation, but the men who minister to its pleasures, and lead the way in sports. No one can have any doubt of that. No one can have any doubt about the sort of persons whom the vast majority of young people, and some older people too, delight to honour. With some it is the star of the music hall or opera. With a great many more it is the winner of a race, or the champion player in a successful football team, or the most effective bowler, or the highest scorer in cricket. The crowd goes mad about these heroes. There is no throne high enough to place them on.
Money and favours are lavished at their feet, and all the newspapers are full of their glorious triumphs.
Mark I am not speaking against athletic sports. I like to see a well and honestly played game, and I would join in the clapping when a man makes a clever stroke. What I object to is the crazy and almost delirious worship which is given to these champions of the sporting world. It is the excess of the thing that proves a diseased state of mind. There is more fuss made over some youth who scores a few hundreds on the cricket-field, than there would be over a man who had saved six hundred lives. In hundreds of journals his portrait appears, and his doings are chronicled as if he had wrought some deliverance for the nation. Poor lad, it is not his fault that he has sprung up suddenly into fame, it is the fault of the people who love to have these things so. It is because men have gone pleasure-mad and sport-mad, and in their madness cannot see the difference between a clever athlete and a mental or moral giant. We prove what our own tastes are, we prove the quality of our own hearts and minds, we prove our own debas.e.m.e.nt, when we exalt physical strength above excellence of character, when we make our heroes out of muscle instead of soul, when we worship those who serve our pleasure more than those who set us examples of n.o.ble things, and lead the way in them. It is only another rendering of the old shout, "_Away with this man, and release unto us Barabbas_." Not so wicked, of course, but equally foolish and unworthy.
Who are your heroes? That is the question. Or in other words, What sort of men do you admire most? Answer that, and I know at once what sort of men and women you are. If you are worshippers of pleasure, the champions of the pleasure-world will be your idols and kings. If you are rooted and grounded in the love of lucre, the successful millionaire is the man that you will fawn upon or worship from afar.
If your main delight is in intellectual things, the great thinkers and writers will be the men to whom you look up with reverence. And if you are good men, with a pa.s.sionate love for goodness, and a constant striving to be better than you are, there are none whom you will admire with all your hearts except the good, except the best, and those who are leading in the way of goodness.
In a land which is truly Christian, the only heroes will be those who most resemble Christ. If we are truly Christians, and Christian thoughts have taken full possession of our hearts, we shall recognise no heroes save those who serve as Christ served, who live in a measure as Christ lived, who deny themselves for others, and spend their strength for the benefit of their fellow-men as the Master did. These are the true heroes, and all the others are more or less cheap imitations of them, or false subst.i.tutes for them. These are the true heroes, I say. The men and women who risk their lives to save other lives. The men who use their strength and ability, not for pay, but for the good and the advancement of their fellow-men, to save men from their sins, and to lessen the sum of human ill. The brave men and women who venture all things to serve some great and righteous cause, and to speed on the Kingdom of Christ and righteousness in the world.
We have no right to count any as heroes unless they have courage, patience, self-denial, great love for their fellow-men, and strength which they cheerfully employ for something greater than themselves.
The men, in fact, who have something of Christ in them; these are the only heroes whom G.o.d writes down in His book of life, and they are the only heroes whom we shall exalt in our hearts if we are followers of the crucified One.
In a Christian land, the beginning and end of all true and healthy hero-worship, is to set Christ first and above everything else and every one else in our affections. We shall measure all other men truly if we have first of all taken the true measure of Him. Love Him with all your hearts, say of Him, "Thou art the chief among ten thousand, and the altogether lovely," and you will never give much of your hearts again to the things and the men who are morally not worth loving. You will never be carried away again into the worship of that which is false, common, or cheap. A man who sees _all_ beauty, and the perfect beauty in Christ, will never say that there is much beauty anywhere else, except where there is something that resembles Christ.
We have to make our choice to-day, as those men made it long ago. It is not quite the same choice. It is not Barabbas against Christ, but it is the poor, coa.r.s.e, common, frivolous things of the world against Christ. It is the earthly against the heavenly; it is pleasure and sin against the service of the Man who was crucified: it is the love of self, and things baser than ourselves, against the love of Him who died for us. And everything depends upon that choice. To make Him your King is to become kingly yourselves, and to be crowned at last with the true glory and honour. But it is a terrible thing to say, "_Away with this man, and release unto us Barabbas_."
JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA
BY REV. ALFRED ROWLAND, D.D.. LL.B.
"Joseph of Arimathea, an honourable counsellor, which also waited for the kingdom of G.o.d."--MARK xv. 43.
The crucifixion of our Lord produced strange and startling effects in moral experience, as well as in the physical world. The veil of the Temple was rent from top to bottom as if a hand from heaven had torn it, in order to teach men that the ancient ritual was done with.
Darkness covered the earth, suggesting to thoughtful minds the guilt of the world and the mystery of the sacrifice which atoned for it.
Concurrently with these physical phenomena were spiritual experiences.