Meanwhile the wily priests had sedulously stimulated the passions of the gathering populace. The city was crowded. The early morning drew the devout Jews to the Temple gates. The story of Jesus's trial and condemnation spread rapidly from mouth to mouth. The new indignity which Judaism experienced, now perhaps for the first time, of submitting to a heathen tribunal the judgment of Moses's court, stirred the always overheated blood of the impetuous JudeWhen the procurator came forth from his examination of the prisoner at the bar, an excited crowd had already gathered before his palace gate. It extended down the hill, crowded the narrow street, reached far back into the outer porches of the Temple-a crowd not patiently waiting the verdict of an honored judge, but angrily indignant that he should assume to question the authority and revise the proceedings of their supreme tribunal.

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It was to this audience Pilate announced his judgment of acquittal: "I find no fault in this man."

The priesthood have never been quick to pay deference to the civil power. The Jewish priesthood were not the ones to set the Church an example of submission. From the calm judgment of the procurator they appealed to the passions of the populace. With many accusations, they demanded a reversal of his decision. The rising clamor of a gathering mob seconded the demand.

Then commenced a conflict in which the weak conscience of the procurator proved no match for the strong passions of the Jewish priests; in which, alternately, the judge appealed to the moral sense of the priesthood, and the priesthood to the fears of the judge.

Alas! the one had no moral sense; the other had many fears.

Pilate's part in the execution of Jesus was that of a tool in the hands of stronger natures. Several circumstances conspired to make him a reluctant tool.

He not only despised the priests-as the man of the camp.

is but too apt to despise him of the temple-he hated them, as a proud Roman might well hate the men who had humbled him. Twice in his brief term of office he had measured lances with this same priestly party; twice their cunning had overmatched his strength. At his inauguration he had transferred the head of his army from Cæsarea Philippi to Jerusalem. For five days the Roman standards had floated gayly in the streets of the Holy City; for five days an infuriated crowd had besieged his palace, demanding their removal. At length the army had yielded to the mob, and had borne the Gentile insignia back to the Gentile city. A second time he had presumed to surround his military headquarters in the fortress of Antonia with the Roman shields.. He had borne unmoved the imprecations of people and of priest at this new desecration of their holy hill, nor was it till he had received orders from Tiberius Cæsar, wrested from the emperor by the complaints of this same priesthood, that he had taken them down again. No wonder that the Roman pride of this twice-humiliated procurator revolted at becoming the instrument of these hated priests for the fulfilling of their nefarious designs.

Nobler motives, too, mingled with the baser ones.

The Roman was a stranger to love, but worshiped reverently at the shrine of law. She who has given jurisprudence to the world had not yet learned to do despite to justice. To Pilate as a soldier the life of a single Jew was matter of insignificance; to Pilate as a judge the life of a single subject was sacred. His conscience was never so sensitive as when the robes of his office were those of the bench.

Moreover, from the first, Jesus was even to Pilate's dull apprehension something more than a mere Jew-something, though he knew not what. That more than royal dignity which opened for Jesus a way through three infuriate mobs, which disarmed the guard in the Temple of their purpose of arrest, which drove them back in confusion in the garden, never shone more conspicuously than in the conflict before Pi

late's judgment-seat. The prayer of Christ's lips, "Father, glorify thy son," was answered. The judge felt a nameless dread in the presence of his more than earthly prisoner.

The demeanor of Jesus intensified this dread.

For in all the fearful scenes of violence which ensued, Jesus alone was calm and unmoved-Jesus, whose life trembled in the decision of the hour. There are crises in which silence is greater than any speech, and he spoke but once after his brief preliminary examination in Pilate's hall. To the angry accusations of the priests, to the angrier clamor of the people, to the rude jests of Herod, to the cruel scorn of the Roman soldiery, he interposed only an impressive silence. If in this silence there had been only the patient courage of a Stoic, the old Roman would have admired it. But even his dull head perceived something more-a certain something, inexpressible, inexplicable.

Thus Roman pride and religious awe strengthened and stimulated the weak and wavering conscience of the procu

rator.

But he feared a tumult. He was less a soldier than a politician; less a true judge than either. He had no moral cour age. He dared not assume responsibilities. Caiaphas had said it is better that one man should die than that the whole nation should perish. This argument repeated itself in Pilate's consciousness. It was better to quell this tumult by yielding up a single life than by sacrificing many. He forgot that justice is more than life. He forgot that noble maxim, familiar to every Roman judge as to every American school-boy," Fiat justitia ruat colum." This ignoble fear an ignoble self-interest seconded. He could neither communicate the awe he felt to his imperial master, nor explain the motives, inexplicable even to himself, which urged him to suffer a mob rather than permit the unjust execution of a single Jew.

Thus Pilate's soul was the arena of a battle fiercer than that which waged without. He possessed neither the cour

age of virtue nor the audacity of shameless vice. At every interview with Jesus his better nature wakened, and he resolved to save the prisoner he dared not condemn. At every outery of the clamoring crowd without his baser fears vanquished his judgment, and he resolved to sentence the prisoner he dared not acquit.

This battle he fought out alone. There was no man to help him, and he knew not God.

He was a man of expedients. To save Jesus he resorted to every expedient save that which could alone succeedcourageous, manly, decisive action. A brave man would have called out the cohort and dispersed the mob; but Pilate was not a brave man. He dallied, temporized, argued. He that argues with a mob is already lost.

In the instant and clamorous accusation with which the priesthood sought to set aside the judgment of the procurator, he caught the word Galilee. Jesus, then, was a Galilean. To the tetrarch of Galilee he should be sent. Herod was a Jew; Pilate a Roman. Rival governors of contiguous provinces, political jealousy added to the bitterness of national prejudice. Pilate, with a politician's art, seized the opportunity to proffer the prisoner to Herod as a political compliment. It was accepted. From that day, says the evangelist, Pilate and Herod became friends. Thus in the very hour of his trial Jesus broke down the party wall between Jew and Gentile.

The palace of Herod was situated in the upper city. It crowned Mount Zion. Across the bridge that spans the ravine which divides Mount Zion from Mount Moriah, Jesus was led, accompanied by the Roman soldiery and by a delegation of the Sanhedrim. Herod had long been curious to see this prophet, to hear from his own lips his doctrine, and to witness his wondrous works. But Jesus neither spoke nor wrought to satisfy the curious. To this murderer of John the Baptist he had nothing to say. He never cast his pearls before swine. Herod, in scorn of his claims, arrayed

him in the cast-off apparel of royalty, and sent him back to Pilate's judgment-seat.*

To the Roman Jesus's kingdom was an unmeaning vision. To the Jew it was an idle jest.

The popular current flowed back with the prisoner to the Temple hill, and eddied once more about the corners of the streets and the doorways of the palace. The demand for his death grew momentarily louder and more instant.

Pilate resumed his judgment-seat. No longer truly governor of Judea, he plead for a reversal of the popular verdict. He rehearsed the results of his own examination. He cited the judgment of Herod, descendant of their own Jewish king. He offered to correct the errors of one whom he adjudged as a misguided, but not criminal enthusiast. "I will instruct him," said he," and let him go." In vain. Passion and prejudice have no ears that reason can reach.

The more intense the clamors of the populace, the more intense were the clamors of the Roman's conscience.

At that instant occurred an incident which, however modern philosophy may interpret it, was to the heathen governor an omen from the gods. Pilate's wife, awakened from a fearful dream, in which the destinies of Jesus were strangely intermingled with their own, sent a warning message to her "husband: "Have thou nothing to do with that just man," she said, "for I have suffered many things to-day in a dream because of him."t

A dream to the Roman was like a prophet to the Jew. Nor was the skepticism of these latter days able wholly to resist the inheritance of earlier superstitions. Was it indeed superstition? Or did God in mercy thus re-enforce the faltering conscience of the procurator? However that may be, * Luke xxiii., 6-12.

† Παιδεύσας οὖν αὐτὸν ἀπολύσω, Luke xxiii., 16. Παιδεύω is rarely translated chastise, and its more general signification of instruct is more in harmony with the narrative as well as with the Greek. It is inconceivable that Christ was twice scourged. See Townsend's marginal note in loco.

Matt. xxvii., 19.

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