the warning was in vain. Pilate feared the gods, but he feared man more. He would not disregard the one, he dared not offend the other. Compromise is a crime in cases that demand courage. The feeble heart and fertile brain of Pilate invented a new compromise.

Whenever a foreign governor is imposed upon a discontented people, the popular sentiment is always with the lawbreakers. The release of a state prisoner is accepted as a token of imperial benignity. The Roman government added every year to the festivities of the paschal feast by releasing to the people one such prisoner-whomsoever they demanded. Of this custom Pilate sought to avail himself.

Another Jesus, surnamed Barabbas, lay in chains within the fortress walls. "Which Jesus," cried Pilate, shall I release unto you?"

From a thousand voices the reply rolled up, "Away with this man!" and "Release to us Barabbas."*

By this artifice, as unavailing as it was unmanly, Pilate increased the perplexities of his position. By offering to pardon Jesus he reversed his sentence of acquittal. By appealing to the people he tacitly consented to accept their decision.

With this cry now mingled for the first time another one: "Crucify him!" It was not enough that Jesus die. Jewish. voices demanded the execution of the Jewish sentence by a Gentile process-a process so barbarous that the Jewish code had never known it, Jewish hands had never executed it.

For two hours Pilate had dallied with this mob. Its unchecked passions, stimulated by priestly appeal, had grown momentarily more furious. The tumult which a few soldiers might easily have quelled at first, had increased to serious proportions. Angry voices caught up this cry of "Crucify him!" and rolled it in tumultuous waves till the very hills echoed with the sound, and nature herself seemed to join in

* Matt. xxvii., 15-23; Mark xv., 6-15; Luke xxiii., 17-23; John xviii., 39, 40.

1

Angry faces glared on the
Angry fists outreached in

this rebellion against her Lord. solitary but unmoved prisoner. menace toward him. The feeble protestations of the defeated procurator were drowned in the vehement outcries of the passionate mob. Weakly he attempted to cast the blood of this innocent man upon the people who demanded it. A myriad voices responded, "His blood be on us and on our children." Vainly, in token of his innocence, he washed his hands before them all-hands that have never ceased to be red with the blood of the Son of God. Falteringly he pronounced the sentence which his conscience openly condemned. Reluctantly he released the instigator of sedition, and delivered up to death the Prince of Peace.*

Crucifixion was always preceded by scourging. It was an age of iron, and society had not yet learned to discriminate between punishment and revenge. Cruel hands disrobed the still uncomplaining sufferer. Brawny arms wielded upon his naked back the fearful scourge, whose thongs of leather, loaded with sharp metal, cut at every stroke their bloody furrow in the quivering flesh. This torture, beneath which many a strong man had given up his life, could not extort from the steadfast heart of Jesus a single groan. As a sheep before his shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. Then on his lacerated body was replaced the cast-off robes of royalty. In cruel jest, the crown of thorns was pressed upon his brow, and a reedy sceptre placed within his hand; and a mimicking crowd, with many a ribald jest, paid to this true king a mocking reverence.t

The royalty of Jesus needed no robe, nor crown, nor courtier to attest it. Through all this bloody disguise that royalty still shone. Even the heart of the old Roman, long used to scenes of cruelty, felt in this scene a new horror. For the delivery of this innocent prisoner he made one new effort. To the impatient crowd he brought forth again the object of their hate. To this face, pale with agony and reddened with * Matt. xxvii., 24-26. + Matt. xxvii., 26-30.

drops of blood, he pointed, in the hope that his sufferings might awaken their compassion, though his silent grandeur had no power to touch their hearts with awe. "Behold the man!" he cried.

In vain. He but fed the flames he would fain extinguish. It is idle to appeal to the compassion of a mob. A mob unsated has no compassion. Like the lion, it but whets its appetite with the sight of blood.

Sadly a second time Pilate surrenders himself to the pas-sions he has not the manliness to resist. "Take ye him," he cries," and crucify him; I find no fault in him."

Then at length the emboldened priests, released from their long duplicity, reveal their first, their true indictment. "By our law," they say, "he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God."

In all that crowd it was reserved for the skeptical Roman to give any credence to that claim. This sentence gives new interpretation to the dread which has possessed him-new meaning to the dream whose warning he has disregarded. This soldier's heart, unused to compassion-this skeptical heart, unused to awe, experiences a new sensation, a strange dread, that demands a reversal of his unjust condemnation.

Oh! for one bold, decisive act. Instead, the pitiable procurator weakly resorts to one more sorry stratagem. To the patriotism of the populace he appeals. To the thorn-crowned, scorn-robed Jesus he points as he cries, "Behold your king!"

But patriotism itself is overborne by passion. The popu lace deny their nationality, dethrone their God, accept the Gentile sceptre. "We have no king but Cæsar," the priests reply, while they hiss out the threatening menace, "If thou let this man go thou art not Cæsar's friend."

Of all the Cæsars, Tiberias was the most suspicious and exacting. Of all crimes, that of indifference to his interests was the worst. To his jealous judgment suspicion was evidence. In his tribunal accusation was equivalent to convic