purple garment.) And he saith to them: Behold the Man!" Behold the Man, ye Jews! your Man from the foundation of the world. Behold the Man, who with the suffering of a mortal Man is entirely given up to loving sacrifice for you, and with the love of an immortal Man is eternally devoted to you, and basely rejected by you. CHAPTER LI. PILATE'S FINAL STRUGGLE.-the DEATH-SENTence. Luke xxiii. 24; John xix. 7-16. PILATE'S compassion was doubtless sincere, even though it could not overcome his baser motives, and there is evidence that many in the crowd were shocked at the appearance of Jesus, wrapped in a torn and faded cloak, His hands bound, His head crowned with thorns, His face streaked with blood. Only the chief priests and their attendants are said in the gospel narrative to have kept on shouting for His death. "When the chief priests, therefore, and the servants had seen Him, they cried out, saying: Crucify Him! Crucify Him!" Pilate hoped to win upon the crowd still further by throwing the responsibility of the impending murder upon them and their leaders: "Pilate saith to them: Take Him you and crucify Him, for I find no cause in Him. The Jews answered him: We have a law, and according to the law He ought to die because He made Himself the Son of God." This was a new charge; the others, namely, refusing to pay tribute, inciting rebellion, and setting Himself up to be king, Pilate had already dismissed. But here is a strictly religious case. Rome assumed to protect the Jewish people in their religious rights, and here come their chief priests and accuse this strange being of actually claiming to be their God: a serious matter and a new difficulty. "When Pilate therefore had heard this saying he feared the more." What did he fear? To deliver Jesus up to execution, or to insist further on His innocence? Probably the former. He made another private examination of his prisoner. "And he entered into the hall again, and he said to Jesus: Whence art Thou? But Jesus gave him no answer. Pilate therefore saith to Him: Speakest Thou not to me? Knowest Thou not that I have power to crucify Thee, and I have power to release Thee? Jesus answered: Thou shouldst not have any power against Me, unless it were given thee from above. Therefore, he that hath delivered Me to thee hath the greater sin. And from henceforth Pilate sought to release Him." Nothing can be more unsatisfactory than the attempt to trace the motives of Pilate through all these proceedings-fear and obstinacy, superstition and procrastination. But the strong words of Jesus had some kind of effect on him. Our Lord would not waste words on the question of His divinity before this obdurate pagan, but He calmly points out Pilate's responsibility to the sovereign majesty of God for the exercise of his power over his prisoner's life. But the Jews knew their man; they knew Pilate better than he knew himself. Cæsar was the spell to lay on him, the gloomy Tiberius, the ruthless and irresponsible monarch of the world. "But the Jews cried out, saying: If thou release this man thou art not Cæsar's friend; for whosoever maketh himself a king, speaketh against Cæsar." The thought of the despot's ire covered the conscience of the Roman as with a pall. "Now when Pilate had heard these words, he brought Jesus forth and sat down in the judgment seat, in the place that is called Lithostrotas, and in Hebrew Gabbatha. And it was the parasceve of the Pasch, about the sixth hour." One word more he then said, a last appeal he made as if in despair, to Jesus' friends to speak out for him. It failed. It but reopened the throats of His bloodthirsty enemies: "And he saith to the Jews: Behold your king! But they cried out: Away with Him! Away with Him! Crucify Him! Pilate saith to them: Shall I crucify your king? The chief priests answered: We have no king but Cæsar. And Pilate gave sentence that their petition should be granted. Then, therefore, he delivered Him to them to be crucified." The place at which the awful sentence was at last wrung from Pilate was about three hundred feet eastward from the Ecce-Homo balcony. It was in the regular court room, and Pilate sat down in the Roman curule chair and delivered his judgment upon Jesus. The time was now near mid-day. The perfection of all perfidy is in this assemblage of hate and cowardice, contrasted with our Saviour's patience and love. But what a dreadful deed was that of the Jews in exclaiming: "We have no king but Cæsar?" a solemn and irrevocable abdication of their divinely given princedom over the nations. Thus it was that death came to Jesus and was by Him silently and freely accepted. Since we know that one lightest pang of suffering would suffice for our redemption, then we may inquire why it is that Jesus suffered death, and a death of such multiplied. agony? "Because,' as St. Peter tells us, "Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example that you should follow His steps" (I. Peter ii. 21). For an example of the overflowing measure of love, so that His daily precepts of the hatefulness of sin and the loveworthiness of immortal souls might be sealed with His blood. The crucifixion is the rigor of the divine justice upon sin, and the fulness of the divine love for sinners. The cross alone gives us a right knowledge of God and sin, of hell and the worth of the soul. CHAPTER LII. THE WAY OF THE CROSS. Matt. xxvii. 31-32; Mark xv. 20, 21; Luke xxiii. 26-32; "AND the soldiers took Jesus, and they took off the purple cloak from Him, and put His own garments on Him, and they led Him away to crucify Him." And thus Jesus began His journey to Calvary, His body dreadfully bruised and dripping blood, His eyes full of tears, His heart more heavily laden with grief than His shoulders with the Cross. "And bearing His own Cross He went forth." They had given Him back His clothes, and now they completed His equipment for His last battle-He was armed with the Cross He had so greatly feared and so ardently loved. It had shadowed His cradle, it had darkened every hour of His exIstence. We may fancy how He reverenced it and kissed it and embraced it; hard as its edges sank into His back, heavily as its weight crushed Him down, He loved it and bore it gladly. Leader of sinners up the mountain of God, He was fitly wailed and lamented." followed by the two, thieves. "And there were "Women who be also two other malefactors led with Him to be put to death." So began our Redeemer's Way of the Cross. The love of Jesus for sinners confounds human reason. For consider the effect of His now accepting His death-sentence, and taking up the instrument of it and carrying it to the place of execution. As Jesus took His cross, He willingly became to the multitude, to that congress of the nations represented by the Jews of the Dispersion now assembled for the Passover, the greatest criminal in the whole world. He was condemned by His own race and religion, given up to justice by His own chosen friend and apostle, denied even as an acquaintance by the primate of His brotherhood, and forthwith to be executed by the Roman governor. The very Ruler of the universe disowns Him, and curses Him, as it would seem, and will hide the face of the sun from His dying eyes, and the senseless earth will shudder with horror at His guilt. Here must be the universal sinner, men might say; the quintessence of human guilt is in this man. And it is true, but not by personal guilt, only by the imputation of others' guilt accepted for love's sake; only by the atonement of an unspeakably tender sympathy. Jesus under the cross has taken the place of all sinners under the divine malediction. Thus it is that our sins were the cause of His death." He was wounded for our iniquities, He was bruised for our sins" (Isaias liii. 5). It was soon evident that Jesus was too weak to carry His Cross alone; this was shown, doubtless, by His falling under it. "And as they led Him away, they laid hold on one Simon of Cyrene coming from the country, the father of Alexander and of Rufus. Him they forced to take up His cross. And they |