7.

The last Passover.—The Crucifixion.

 

The Passover rapidly approached; the roads from all quarters were already crowded with the assembling worshippers. It is difficult for those who are ignorant of the extraordinary power which local religious reverence holds over Southern and Asiatic nations, to imagine the state of Judaea and of Jerusalem at the time of this great periodical festival. The rolling onward of countless and gathering masses of population to some of the temples in India; the caravans from all quarters of the Eastern world, which assemble at Mecca during the Holy Season; the multitudes which formerly flowed to Loreto or Rome at the great ceremonies, when the Roman Catholic religion held its unenfeebled sway over the mind of Europe—do not surpass, perhaps scarcely equal, the sudden, simultaneous confluence, not of the population of a single city, but of the whole Jewish nation, towards the capital of Judaea at the time of the Passover. Dispersed as they were throughout the world, it was not only the great mass of the inhabitants of Palestine, but many foreign Jews who thronged from every quarter—from Babylonia, from Arabia, from Egypt, from Asia Minor and Greece, from Italy, probably even from Gaul and Spain. Some notion of the density and vastness of the multitude may be formed from the calculation of Josephus, who, having ascertained the number of paschal lambs sacrificed on one of these solemn occasions, which amounted to 256,500, and assigning the ordinary number to a company who could partake of the same victim, estimated the total number of the pilgrims and residents in Jerusalem at 2,700,000. Through all this concourse of the whole Jewish race, animated more or less profoundly, according to their peculiar temperament, with the same national and religious feelings, rumours about the appearance, the induct, the pretensions, the language of Jesus, could not but have spread abroad, and be communicated with unchecked rapidity. The utmost anxiety prevails throughout the whole crowded city and its neighborhood to ascertain whether this new prophet—this more, perhaps, than prophet—will, as it were, confront at this solemn period the assembled nation; or, as on the last occasion, remain concealed in the remote parts of the country. The Sanhedrin are on their guard, and strict injunctions are issued that they may receive the earliest intelligence of his approach, in order that they may arrest him before He has attempted to make any impression on the multitude.

Already Jesus had either crossed the Jordan, or descended from the hill country to the north. He had passed through Jericho, where he had been recognised by two blind men as the Son of David, the title of the Messiah probably the most prevalent among the common people; and instead of disclaiming the homage, he had rewarded the avowal by the restoration of their sight to the suppliants.

On his way from Jericho to Jerusalem, but much nearer to the metropolis, He was hospitably received in the house of a wealthy publican named Zaccheus, who had been so impressed with the report of his extraordinary character, that, being of small stature, he had climbed a tree by the roadside to see him pass by; and had evinced the sincerity of his belief in the just and generous principles of the new faith, both by giving up at once half of his property to the poor, and offering the amplest restitution to those whom he might have oppressed in the exercise of his function as a publican. The noblest homage to the power of the new faith! It is probable that Jesus passed the night, perhaps the whole of the Sabbath, in the house of Zaccheus, and set forth, on the first day of the week, through the villages of Bethphage and Bethany to Jerusalem.

Let us, however, before we trace his progress, pause to ascertain, if possible, the actual state of feeling at this precise period, among the different ranks and orders of the Jews.

Jesus of Nazareth had now, for three years, assumed the character of a public teacher; his wonderful works were generally acknowledged; all no doubt considered him as an extraordinary being; but whether he was the Messiah still, as it were, hung in the balance. His language, plain enough to those who could comprehend the real superiority, the real divinity of his character, was necessarily dark and ambiguous to those who were insensible to the moral and spiritual beauty of his words and actions. Few, perhaps, beyond his more immediate followers, looked upon him with implicit faith; many with doubt, even with hope; perhaps still greater numbers, comprising the more turbulent of the lower class, and almost all the higher and more influential, with incredulity, if not with undisguised animosity. For, though thus for three years He had kept the public mind in suspense as to his being the promised Redeemer, of those circumstances to which the popular passions had looked forward as the only certain signs of the Messiah’s coming; those, which among the mass of the community were considered inseparable from the commencement of the kingdom of heaven—the terrific, the awful, the national, not one had come to pass. The deliverance of the nation from the Roman yoke seemed as remote as ever; the governor had made but a short time, perhaps a year, before, a terrible assertion of his supremacy, by defiling the Temple itself with the blood of the rebellious or unoffending Galileans. The Sanhedrin, imperious during his absence, quailed and submitted whenever the tribunal of Pilate was erected in the metropolis. The publicans, those unwelcome remembrancers of the subjugation of the country, were still abroad in every town and village, levying the hateful tribute; and instead of joining in the popular clamour against these agents of a foreign rule, or even reprobating their extortions, Jesus had treated them with his accustomed equable gentleness; he had entered familiarly into their houses; one of his constant followers, one of his chosen twelve, was of this proscribed and odious profession.

Thus, then, the fierce and violent, the avowed or the secret partisans of the Galilean Judas, and all who, without having enrolled themselves in his sect, inclined to the same opinions, if not already inflamed against Jesus, were at least ready to take fire, on the instant that his success might appear to endanger their schemes and visions of independence: and their fanaticism once inflamed, no considerations of humanity or justice would arrest its course or assuage its violence. To every sect Jesus had been equally uncompromising. To the Pharisees he had always proclaimed the most undisguised opposition; and if his language rises from its gentle and persuasive, though authoritative tone, it is ever in inveighing against the hypocrisy, the avarice, the secret vices of this class, whose dominion over the public mind it was necessary to shake with a strong hand; all communion, with whose peculiar opinions it was incumbent on the Teacher, of purer virtue to disclaim in the most unmeasured terms. But this hostility to the Pharisaic party was likely to operate unfavourably to the cause of Jesus, not only with the party itself, but with the great mass of the lower orders. If there be in man a natural love of independence both in thought and action, there is among the vulgar, especially in a nation so superstitious as the Jews, a reverence, even a passionate attachment to religious tyranny. The bondage in which the minute observances of the traditionists, more like those of the Brahminical Indians than the free and more generous institutes of their Lawgiver, had fettered the whole life of the Jew, was nevertheless a source of satisfaction and pride; and the offer of deliverance from this inveterate slavery would be received by most with unthankfulness or suspicion. Nor can any teacher of religion, however he may appeal to the better feelings and to the reason, without endangering his influence over the common people, permit himself to be outdone in that austerity which they ever consider the sole test of fervour and sincerity. Even those less enslaved to the traditionary observances, the Lawyers (perhaps the religious ancestors of the K­raites), who adhered more closely, and confined their precepts, to the sacred books, must have trembled and recoiled at the manner in which Jesus assumed an authority above that of Moses or the Prophets. With the Sadducees Jesus had come less frequently into collision: it is probable that this sect prevailed chiefly among the aristocracy of the larger cities and of the metropolis, while Jesus in general mingled with the lower orders; and the Sadducees were less regular attendants in the synagogues and schools, where he was wont to deliver his instructions. They, in all likelihood, were less possessed than the rest of the nation with the expectation of the Messiah; at all events they rejected as innovations not merely the Babylonian notions about the angels and the resurrection, which prevailed in the rest of the community, but altogether disclaimed these doctrines, and professed themselves adherents of the original simple Mosaic Theocracy. Hence, though on one or two occasions they appear to have joined in the general confederacy to arrest his progress, the Sadducees for the most part would look on with contemptuous indifference; and although the declaration of eternal life mingled with the whole system of the teaching of Jesus, yet it was not till his Resurrection had become the leading article of the new faith—till Christianity was thus, as it were, committed in irreconcileable hostility with the main principle of their creed—that their opposition took a more active turn, and from the accidental increase of their weight in the Sanhedrin, came into perpetual and terrible collision with the Apostles. The only point of union which the Sadducaic party would possess with the Pharisees would be the most extreme jealousy of the abrogation of the Law, the exclusive feeling of its superior sanctity, wisdom, and irrepealable authority: on this point the spirit of nationality would draw together these two conflicting parties, who would vie with each other in the patriotic, the religious vigilance with which they would seize on any expression of Jesus which might imply the abrogation of the divinely inspired institutes of Moses, or even any material innovation on their strict letter. But, besides the general suspicion that Jesus was assuming an authority above, in some cases contrary to the Law, there were other trifling circumstances which threw doubts on that genuine and uncontaminated Judaism, which the nation in general would have imperiously demanded from their Messiah. There seems to have been some apprehension, as we have before stated, of his abandoning his ungrateful countrymen, and taking refuge among a foreign race; and his conduct towards the Samaritans was directly contrary to the strongest Jewish prejudices. On more than one occasion, even if his remarkable conduct and language during his first journey through Samaria had not transpired, He had avowedly discountenanced that implacable national hatred, which no one can ever attempt to allay without diverting it, as it were, on his own head. He had adduced the example of a Samaritan as the only one of the ten lepers who showed either gratitude to his benefactor, or piety to God; and in the exquisite apologue of the Good Samaritan, he had placed the Priest and the Levite in a most unfavourable light, as contrasted with the descendant of that hated race.

Yet there could be no doubt that He had already avowed himself to be the Messiah: his harbinger, the Baptist, had proclaimed the rapid, the instantaneous approach of the kingdom of Christ. Of that kingdom Jesus himself had spoken as commencing, as having already commenced; but where were the outward, the visible, the undeniable signs of sovereignty. He had permitted himself, both in private and in public, to be saluted as the Son of David, an expression which was equivalent to a claim to the hereditary throne of David: but still to the common eye he appeared the same lowly and unroyal being, as when he first set forth as a teacher through the villages of Galilee. As to the nature of this kingdom, even to his closest followers, his language was most perplexing and contradictory. An unworldly kingdom, a moral dominion, a purely religious community, held together only by the bond of common faith, was so unlike the former intimate union of civil and religious polity—so diametrically opposite to the first principles of their Theocracy—as to be utterly unintelligible. The real nature and design of the new religion seemed altogether beyond their comprehension; and it is most remarkable to trace it, as it slowly dawned on the minds of the Apostles themselves, and gradually, after the death of Jesus, extended its horizon till it comprehended all mankind within its expanding view. To be in the highest sense the religious ancestors of mankind; to be the authors, or at least the agents, in the greatest moral revolution which has taken place in the world; to obtain an influence over the human mind, as much more extensive than that which had been violently obtained by the arms of Rome, as it was more conducive to the happiness of the human race; to be the teachers and disseminators of doctrines, opinions, sentiments, which, slowly incorporating themselves, as it were, with the intimate essence of man’s moral being, were to work a gradual but total change—a change which, as to the temporal as well as the eternal destiny of our race, to those who look forward to the simultaneous progress of human civilisation and the genuine religion of Jesus, is yet far from complete—all this was too high, too remote, too mysterious, for the narrow vision of the Jewish people. They, as a nation, were better prepared indeed, by already possessing the rudiments of the new faith, for becoming the willing agents in this divine work. On the other hand they were, in some respects, disqualified by that very distinction, which, by keeping them in rigid seclusion from the rest of mankind, had rendered them, as it were, the faithful depositaries of the great principle of religion, the Unity of God. The peculiar privilege, with which they had been entrusted for the benefit of mankind, had become, as it were, their exclusive property: nor were they willing, indiscriminately, to communicate to others this their own distinctive prerogative.

Those, for such doubtless there were, who pierced, though dimly, through the veil—the more reasoning, the more advanced, the more philosophical—were little likely to espouse the cause of Jesus with vigour and resolution. Persons of this character are usually too calm, dispassionate, and speculative, to be the active and zealous instruments in a great religious revolution. It is probable that most of this class were either far gone in Oriental mysticism, or in some instances in the colder philosophy of the Greeks. For these Jesus was as much too plain and popular, as he was too gentle and peaceable for the turbulent. He was scarcely more congenial to the severe and ascetic practices of the Essene, than to the fiercer followers of the Galilean Judas. Though the Essene might admire the exquisite purity of his moral teaching and the uncompromising firmness with which he repressed the vices of all ranks and parties; however he might be prepared for the abrogation of the ceremonial law, and the substitution of the religion of the heart for that of the prevalent outward forms, on his side he was too closely bound by his own monastic rules: his whole existence was recluse and contemplative. His religion was altogether unfitted for aggression, so that, however apparently it might coincide with Christianity in some material points, in fact its vital system was repugnant to that of the new faith. Though, after strict investigation, the Essene would admit the numerous candidates who aspired to unite themselves with his coenobitic society, in which no one, according to Pliny’s expression, was born but which was always full, he would never seek proselytes, or use any active means for disseminating his principles; and it is worthy of remark, that almost the only quarter of Palestine which Jesus does not appear to have visited, is the district near the Dead Sea, where the agricultural settlements of the Essenes were chiefly situated.

While the mass of the community were hostile to Jesus, from his deficiency in the more imposing, the warlike, the destructive signs of the Messiah’s power and glory; from his opposition to the genius and principles of the prevailing sects; from his want of nationality, both as regarded the civil independence and the exclusive religious superiority of the race of Abraham; and from their own general incapacity for comprehending the moral sublimity of his teaching; additional, and not less influential motives conspired to inflame the animosity of the Rulers. Independent of the dread of innovation, inseparable from established governments, they could not but discern the utter incompatibility of their own rule with that of an unworldly Messiah. They must abdicate at once, if not their civil office as magistrates, unquestionably their sovereignty over the public mind; retract much which they had been teaching on the authority of their fathers, the Wise men; and submit, with the lowest and most ignorant, to be the humble scholars of the new Teacher.

With all this mingled, no doubt, a real apprehension of offending the Roman power. The Rulers could not but discern on how precarious a foundation rested not only the feeble shadow of national independence, but even the national existence. A single mandate from the Emperor, not unlikely to be precipitately advised and relentlessly carried into execution, on the least appearance of tumult, by a governor of so decided a character as Pontius Pilate, might annihilate at once all that remained of their civil, and even of their religious, constitution. If we look forward we find that, during the whole of the period which precedes the last Jewish war, the ruling authorities of the nation pursued the same cautious policy. They were driven into the insurrection, not by their own deliberate determination, but by the uncontrollable fanaticism of the populace. To every overture of peace they lent a willing ear; and their hopes of an honourable capitulation, by which the city might be spared the horrors of a storm, and the Temple be secured from desecration, did not expire till their party was thinned by the remorseless sword of the Idumean and the Assassin, and the Temple had become the stronghold of one of the contending factions. Religious fears might seem to countenance this trembling apprehension of the Roman power, for there is strong ground, both in Josephus and the Talmudic writings, for believing that the current interpretation of the prophecies of Daniel designated the Romans as the predestined destroyers of the Theocracy. And however the more enthusiastic might look upon this only as one of the inevitable calamities which were to precede the appearance and final triumph of the Messiah, the less fervid faith of the older and more commanding party was far more profoundly impressed with the dread of the impending ruin, than elated with the remoter hope of final restoration. The advice of Caiaphas, therefore, to sacrifice even an innocent man for the safety of the state, would appear to them both sound and reasonable policy.

We must imagine this suspense, this agitation of the crowded city, or we shall be unable fully to enter into the beauty of the calm and unostentatious dignity with which Jesus pursues his course through the midst of this terrific tumult. He preserves the same equable composure in the triumphant procession into the Temple and in the Hall of Pilate. Everything indicates his tranquil conviction of his inevitable death; He foretells it with all its afflicting circumstances to his disciples, incredulous almost to the last to this alone of their Master’s declarations. At every step He feels himself more inextricably within the toils; yet He moves onwards with the self-command of a willing sacrifice, constantly dwelling with a profound, though chastened, melancholy on his approaching fate, and intimating that his death was necessary, in order to secure indescribable benefits for his faithful followers and for mankind. Yet there is no needless exasperation of his enemies; He observes the utmost prudence, though He seems so fully aware that his prudence can be of no avail; He never passes the night within the city; and it is only by the treachery of one of his followers that the Sanhedrin at length make themselves masters of his person.

The Son of Man had now arrived at Bethany, and we must endeavour to trace his future proceedings in a consecutive course. But if it has been difficult to dispose the events of the life of Jesus in the order of time, this difficulty increases as we approach its termination. However embarrassing this fact to those who require something more than historical credibility in the evangelical narratives, to those who are content with a lower and more rational view of their authority, it throws not the least suspicion on their truth. It might almost seem, at the present period, that the Evangelists, confounded as it were, and stunned with the deep sense of the importance of the crisis, however they might remember the facts, had in some degree perplexed and confused their regular order.

At Bethany the Lord took up his abode in the house of Simon, who had been a leper, and, it is no improbably conjectured, had been healed by the wonderful power of Jesus. Simon was, in all likelihood, closely connected, though the degree of relationship is not intimated, with the family of Lazarus, for Lazarus was present at the feast, and it was conducted by Martha his sister. The fervent devotion of their sister Mary had been already indicated on two occasions; and this passionate zeal, now heightened by gratitude for the recent restoration of her brother to life, evinced itself in her breaking an alabaster box of very costly perfume, and anointing the Saviour’s head, according, as we have seen on a former occasion, to a usage not uncommon in Oriental banquets. It is possible that vague thoughts of the royal character, which she expected that Jesus was about to assume, might mingle with those purer feelings which led her to pay this prodigal homage to his person. The mercenary character of Judas now begins to be developed. Judas had been appointed a kind of treasurer, and entrusted with the care of the common purse, from which the scanty necessities of the humble and temperate society had been defrayed, and the rest reserved for distribution among the poor. Some others of the disciples had been seized with astonishment at this unusual and seemingly unnecessary waste of so valuable a commodity: but Judas broke out into open remonstrance, and, concealing his own avarice under the veil of charity for the poor, protested against the wanton prodigality. Jesus contented himself with praising the pious and affectionate devotion of the woman, and, reverting to his usual tone of calm melancholy, declared that unknowingly she had performed a more pious office, the anointing his body for his burial.

The intelligence of the arrival of Jesus at Bethany spread rapidly to the city, from which it was not quite two miles distant. Multitudes thronged forth to behold him: nor was Jesus the only object of interest, for the fame of the resurrection of Lazarus was widely disseminated, and the strangers in Jerusalem were scarcely less anxious to behold a man who had undergone a fate so unprecedented.

Lazarus, thus an object of intense interest to the people, became one of no less jealousy to the ruling authorities, the enemies of Jesus. His death was likewise decreed, and the magistracy only awaited a favourable opportunity for the execution of their edicts. But the Sanhedrin is at first obliged to remain in overawed and trembling inactivity. The popular sentiment is so decidedly in favour of Jesus of Nazareth, that they dare not venture to oppose his open, his public, his triumphant procession into the city, or his entrance amid the applauses of the wondering multitude into the Temple itself. On the morning of the second day of the week Jesus is seen, in the face of day, approaching one of the gates of the city which looked towards Mount Olivet. In avowed conformity to a celebrated prophecy of Zechariah, he appears riding on the yet unbroken colt of an ass; the procession of his followers, as he descends the side of the Mount of Olives, escort him with royal honours, and with acclamations expressive of the title of the Messiah, towards the city: many of them had been witnesses of the resurrection of Lazarus, and no doubt proclaimed, as they advanced, this extraordinary instance of power. They are met by another band advancing from the city, who receive him with the same homage, strew branches of palm and even their garments in his way; and the Sanhedrin could not but hear within the courts of the Temple, the appalling proclamation, “Hosannah! Blessed is the King of Israel, that cometh in the name of the Lord.” Some of the Pharisees, who had mingled with the multitude, remonstrate with Jesus, and command him to silence what to their ears sounded like the profane, the impious adulation of his partisans. Uninterrupted, and only answering that if these were silent, the stones on which He trod would bear witness, Jesus still advances; the acclamations become yet louder; He is hailed as the Son of David, the rightful heir of David’s kingdom; and the desponding Pharisees, alarmed at the complete mastery over the public mind which He appears to possess, withdraw for the present their fruitless opposition. On the declivity of the hill he pauses to behold the city at his feet, and something of that emotion, which afterwards is expressed with much greater fulness, betrays itself in a few brief and emphatic sentences, expressive of the future miserable destiny of the devoted Jerusalem.

The whole crowded city is excited by this increasing tumult. Anxious inquiries about the cause, and the intelligence that it is the entrance of Jesus of Nazareth into the city, still heighten the universal suspense. And even in the Temple itself, where perhaps the religion of the place, or the expectation of some public declaration, or perhaps of some immediate sign of his power, had caused a temporary silence among his older followers, the children prolong the acclamations.. Then, too, as the sick, the infirm, the afflicted with different maladies, are brought to him to be healed, and are restored at once to health or to the use of their faculties, at every instance of the power and goodness of Jesus the same uncontrolled acclamations from the younger part of the multitude are renewed with increasing fervour.

Those of the Sanhedrin who are present, though they do not attempt at this immediate juncture to stem the torrent, venture to remonstrate against the disrespect to the sanctity of the Temple, and demand of Jesus to silence what to their feelings sounded like profane violation of the sacred edifice. Jesus replies, as usual, with an apt quotation from the sacred writings, which declared that even the voices of children and infants might be raised, without reproof, in praise and thanksgiving to God.

Among the multitudes of Jews who assembled at the Passover, there were usually many proselytes who were called Greeks (a term in Jewish language of as wide signification as that of Barbarians with the Greeks, and including all who were not of Jewish descent). Some of this class, carried away by the general enthusiasm towards Jesus, expressed an anxious desire to be admitted to his presence. It is not improbable that these proselytes might be permitted to advance no farther than the division in the outer Court of the Gentiles, where certain palisades were erected, with inscriptions in various languages, prohibiting the entrance of all foreigners; or even if they were allowed to pass this barrier, they may have been excluded from the Court of Israel, into which Jesus may have passed. By the intervention of two of the Apostles, their desire is made known to Jesus; who, perhaps as he passes back through the outward Court, permits them to approach. No doubt as these proselytes shared in the general excitement towards the person of Jesus, so they shared in the general expectation of the immediate, the instantaneous commencement of the splendour, the happiness of the Messiah’s kingdom. To their surprise, either in answer to or anticipating their declaration to this effect, instead of enlarging on the glory of that great event, the somewhat ambiguous language of Jesus dwells, at first, on his approaching fate, on the severe trial which awaits the devotion of his followers; yet on the necessity of this humiliation, this dissolution to his final glory, and to the triumph of his beneficent religion. It rises at length into a devotional address to the Father, to bring immediately to accomplishment all his promises, for the glorification of the Messiah. As he was yet speaking, a rolling sound was heard in the heavens, which the unbelieving part of the multitude heard only as an accidental burst of thunder: to others, however, it seemed an audible, a distinct, or, according to those who adhere to the strict letter, the articulate voice of an angel, proclaiming the divine sanction to the presage of his future glory. Jesus continues his discourse in a tone of profounder mystery, yet evidently declaring the immediate discomfiture of the “Prince of this world,” the adversary of the Jewish people and of the human race, his own departure from the world, and the important consequences which were to ensue from that departure. After his death, his religion was to be more attractive than during his life. “ I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” Among the characteristics of the Messiah which were deeply rooted in the general belief, was the eternity of his reign; once revealed, he was revealed for ever; once established in their glorious, their paradisiacal state, the people of God, the subjects of the kingdom, were to be liable to no change, no vicissitude. The allusions of Jesus to his departure, clashing with this notion of his perpetual presence, heightened their embarrassment; and, leaving them in this state of mysterious suspense, he withdrew unperceived from the multitude, and retired again with his own chosen disciples to the village of Bethany.

The second morning Jesus returned to Jerusalem. A fig-tree stood by the wayside, of that kind well known in Palestine, which during a mild winter preserve their leaves, and with the early spring put forth and ripen their fruit. Jesus approached the tree to pluck the fruit; but finding that it bore none, condemned it to perpetual barrenness.

This transaction is remarkable, as almost the only instance in which Jesus adopted that symbolic mode of teaching by action, rather than by language, so peculiar to the East, and so frequently exemplified in the earlier books, especially of the Prophets. For it is difficult to conceive any reason either for the incident itself, or for its admission into the evangelic narrative at a period so important, unless it was believed to convey some profounder meaning. The close moral analogy, the accordance with the common phraseology between the barren tree, disqualified by its hardened and sapless state from bearing its natural produce, and the Jewish nation, equally incapable of bearing the fruits of Christian goodness, formed a most expressive, and, as it were, living apologue.

On this day, Jesus renews the remarkable scene which had taken place at the first Passover. The customary traffic, the tumult and confusion, which his authority had restrained for a short time, had been renewed in the courts of the Temple; and Jesus again expelled the traders from the holy precincts, and, to secure the silence and the sanctity of the whole enclosure, prohibited the carrying any vessel through the Temple courts. Through the whole of this day the Sanhedrin, as it were, rested on their arms; they found, with still increasing apprehension, that every hour the multitude crowded with more and more anxious interest around the Prophet of Nazareth; his authority over the Temple courts seems to have been admitted without resistance; and probably the assertion of the violated dignity of the Temple was a point on which the devotional feelings would have been so strongly in favour of the Redeemer, that it would have been highly dangerous and unwise for the magistrates to risk even the appearance of opposition or of dissatisfaction.

The third morning arrived. As Jesus passed to the Temple, the fig-tree, the symbol of the Jewish nation, stood utterly withered and dried up. But, as it were, to prevent the obvious inference from the immediate fulfilment of his malediction—almost the only destructive act during his whole public career, and that on a tree by the wayside, the common property—Jesus mingles with his promise of power to his Apostles to perform acts as extraordinary, the strictest injunctions to the milder spirit inculcated by his precept and his example. Their prayers were to be for the pardon, not for the providential destruction, of their enemies.

The Sanhedrin had now determined on the necessity of making an effort to discredit Jesus with the more and more admiring multitude. A deputation arrives to demand by what authority He had taken up his station, and was daily teaching in the Temple, had expelled the traders, and, in short, had usurped a complete superiority over the accredited and established instructors of the people? The self-command and promptitude of Jesus caught them, as it were, in their own toils, and reduced them to the utmost embarrassment. The claim of the Baptist to the prophetic character had been generally admitted, and even passionately asserted; his death had, no doubt, still further endeared him to all who detested the Herodian rule, or who admired the uncompromising boldness with which he had condemned iniquity even upon the throne. The popular feeling would have resented an impeachment on his prophetic dignity. When, therefore, Jesus demanded their judgement as to the Baptism of John, they had but the alternative of acknowledging its divine sanction, and so tacitly condemning themselves for not having submitted to his authority, and even for not admitting his testimony in favour of Jesus; or of exposing themselves, by denying it, to popular insult and fury. The self-degrading confession of their ignorance placed Jesus immediately on the vantage ground, and at once annulled their right to question or to decide upon the authority of his mission—that right which was considered to be vested in the Sanhedrin. They were condemned to listen to language still more humiliating. In two striking parables, that of the Lord of the Vineyard, and of the Marriage Feast, Jesus not obscurely intimated the rejection of those labourers who had been first summoned to the work of God; of those guests who had been first invited to the nuptial banquet; and the substitution of meaner and most unexpected guests or subjects in their place.

The fourth day arrived; and once more Jesus appeared in the Temple with a still increasing concourse of followers. No unfavourable impression had yet been made on the popular mind by his adversaries; his career is yet unchecked; his authority unshaken.

His enemies are now fully aware of their own desperate position. The apprehension of the progress of Jesus unites the most discordant parties into one formidable conspiracy; the Pharisaic, the Sadducaic, and the Herodian factions agree to make common cause against the common enemy: the two national sects, the Traditionists and the Anti-traditionists, no longer hesitate to accept the aid of the foreign or Herodian faction. Some suppose the Herodians to have been the officers and attendants on the court of Herod, then present at Jerusalem; but the appellation more probably includes all those who, estranged from the more inveterate Judaism of the nation, and having, in some degree, adopted Grecian habits and opinions, considered the peace of the country best secured by the government of the descendants of Herod, with the sanction and under the protection of Rome. They were the foreign faction, and as such, in general, in direct opposition to the Pharisaic, or national party. But the success of Jesus, however at present it threatened more immediately the ruling authorities in Jerusalem, could not but endanger the Galilean government of Herod. The object, therefore, was to implicate Jesus with the faction, or at least to tempt him into acknowledging opinions similar to those of the Galilean demagogue—a scheme the more likely to work on the jealousy of the Roman government, if it was at the last Passover that the apprehension of tumult among the Galilean strangers had justified, or appeared to justify, the massacre perpetrated by Pilate. The plot was laid with great subtlety; for either way Jesus, it appeared, must commit himself. The great test of the Galilean opinion was, the lawfulness of tribute to a foreign power; which Judas had boldly declared to be not merely a base compromise of the national independence, but an impious infringement on the first principles of their theocracy. But the independence, if not the universal dominion, of the Jews was inseparably bound up with the popular belief in the Messiah. Jesus, then, would either, on the question of the lawfulness of tribute to Caesar, confirm the bolder doctrines of the Galilean, and so convict himself before the Romans as one of that dangerous faction; or he would admit its legality, and so annul at once all his claims to the character of the Messiah. Not in the least thrown off his guard by the artful courtesy, or rather the adulation of their address, Jesus appeals to the current coin of the country, which, bearing the impress of the Roman Emperor, was in itself a recognition of Roman supremacy.

The Herodian or political party thus discomfited, the Sadducees advanced to the encounter. Nothing can appear more captious or frivolous than their question with regard to the future possession of a wife in another state of being, who had been successively married to seven brothers, according to the Levirate law. But, perhaps, considered in reference to the opinions of the time, it will seem less extraordinary. The Sadducees, no doubt, had heard that the resurrection and the life to come had formed an essential tenet in the teaching of Jesus. They concluded that his notions on these subjects were those generally prevalent among the people. But, if the later Rabbinical notions of the happiness of the renewed state of existence were current, or even known in their general outline, nothing could be more gross or unspiritual: if less voluptuous, they were certainly not less strange and unreasonable than those which perhaps were derived from the same source—the Paradise of Mohammed. The Sadducees were accustomed to contend with these disputants, whose paradisiacal state, to be established by the Messiah, after the resurrection, was but the completion of those temporal promises in the book of Deuteronomy, a perpetuity of plenty, fertility, and earthly enjoyment. The answer of Jesus, while it declares the certainty of another state of existence, carefully purifies it from all these corporeal and earthly images; and assimilates man, in another state of existence, to a higher order of beings. And in his concluding inference from the passage in Exodus, in which God is described as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the allusion may perhaps be still kept up. The temporal and corporeal resurrection, according to the common Pharisaic belief, was to take place only after the coming of the Messiah; yet their reverence for the fathers of the race, their holy ancestors, would scarcely allow even the Sadducee to suppose their total extinction. The actual, the pure beatitude of the Patriarchs, was probably an admitted point; if not formally decided by their teachers, implicitly received, and fervently embraced by the religious feelings of the whole people. But if, according to the Sadducaic principle, the soul did not exist independent of the body, even Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had shared the common fate, the favour of God had ceased with their earthly dissolution ; nor in the time of Moses could He be justly described as the God of those who in death had sunk into utter annihilation.

Although now engaged in a common cause, the hostility of the Pharisaic party to the Sadducees could not but derive gratification from their public discomfiture. One Scribe of their sect is so struck by the superiority of Jesus, that, though still with something of an insidious design, he demands in what manner he should rank the commandments, which in popular belief were probably of equal dignity and importance? But when Jesus comprises the whole of religion under the simple precepts of the love of God and the love of man, the Scribe is so struck with the sublimity of the language, that he does not hesitate openly to espouse his doctrines.

Paralyse by this desertion, and warned by the discomfiture of the two parties which had preceded them in dispute with Jesus, the Pharisees appear to have stood wavering and uncertain how to speak or act. Jesus seizes the opportunity of still further weakening their authority with the assembled multitude; and, in his turn, addresses an embarrassing question as to the descent of the Messiah. The Messiah, according to the universal belief, would be the heir and representative of David: Jesus, by a reference to the Second Psalm, which was generally considered prophetic of the Redeemer, forces them to confess that, even according to their own authority, the kingdom of the Messiah was to be of far higher dignity, far wider extent, and administered by a more exalted sovereign than David, for even David himself, by their own admission, had called him his Lord.

The Pharisees withdrew in mortified silence, and for that time abandoned all hope of betraying him into any incautious or unpopular denial by their captious questions. But they withdrew unmoved by the wisdom, unattracted by the beauty, unsubdued by the authority of Jesus.

After some delay, during which took place the beautiful incident of his approving the charity of the poor widow, who cast her mite into the treasury of the Temple, he addressed the wondering multitude (“for the common people heard him gladly”) in a grave and solemn denunciation against the tyranny, the hypocrisy, the bigoted attachment to the most minute observances, and at the same time the total blindness to the spirit of religion, which actuated that great predominant party. He declared them possessed by the same proud and inhuman spirit, which had perpetually bedewed the city with the blood of the Prophets. Jerusalem had thus for ever rejected the mercy of God.

This appalling condemnation was, as it were, the final declaration of war against the prevailing religion; it declared that the new doctrines could not harmonise with minds so inveterately wedded to their own narrow bigotry. But even yet the people were not altogether estranged from Jesus, and in that class in which the Pharisaic interest had hitherto despotically ruled, it appeared as it were trembling for its existence.

And now everything indicated the approaching, the immediate crisis. Although the populace were so decidedly, up to the present instant, in his favour—though many of the ruling party were only withholden by the dread of that awful sentence of excommunication, which inflicted civil, almost religious death, from avowing themselves his disciples — yet Jesus never entered the Temple again. The next time he appeared before the people was as a prisoner, as a condemned malefactor. As he left the Temple, a casual expression of admiration from some of his followers, at the magnificence and solidity of the building and the immense size of the stones of which it was formed, called forth a prediction of its impending ruin; which was expanded, to four of his Apostles, into a more detailed and circumstantial description of its appalling fate, as he sat, during the evening, upon the Mount of Olives.

It is impossible to conceive a spectacle of greater natural or moral sublimity than the Saviour seated on the slope of the Mount of Olives, and thus looking down, almost for the last time, on the Temple and city of Jerusalem, crowded as it then was with near three millions of worshippers. It was evening, and the whole irregular outline of the city rising from the deep glens, which encircled it on all sides, might be distinctly traced. The sun, the significant emblem of the great Fountain of moral light, to which Jesus and his faith had been perpetually compared, may be imagined sinking behind the western hills, while its last rays might linger on the broad and massy fortifications on Mount Sion, on the stately palace of Herod, on the square tower, the Antonia, at the corner of the Temple, and on the roof of the Temple, fretted all over with golden spikes, which glittered like fire; while below, the colonnades and lofty gates would cast their broad shadows over the courts, and afford that striking contrast between vast masses of gloom and gleams of the richest light, which only an evening scene, like the present, can display. Nor, indeed (even without the sacred and solemn associations connected with the Holy City), would it be easy to conceive any natural situation in the world of more impressive grandeur, or likely to be seen with greater advantage under the influence of such accessories, than that of Jerusalem, seated, as it was, upon hills of irregular height, intersected by bold ravines, and with still loftier mountains in the distance; itself formed, in its most conspicuous parts, of gorgeous ranges of Eastern architecture, in all its lightness, luxuriance, and variety. The effect may have been heightened by the rising of the slow volumes of smoke from the evening sacrifices, while even at the distance of the slope of Mount Olivet the silence may have been faintly broken by the hymns of the worshippers.

Yet the fall of that splendid edifice was inevitable; the total demolition of all those magnificent and time-hallowed structures might not be averted. It was necessary to the complete development of the designs of Almighty Providence for the welfare of mankind in the promulgation of Christianity. Independent of all other reasons, the destruction certainly of the Temple, and if not of the city, at least of the city as the centre and metropolis of a people, the only true and exclusive worshippers of the one Almighty Creator, seemed essential to the progress of the new faith. The universal and comprehensive religion to be promulgated by Christ and his Apostles, was grounded on the abrogation of all local claims to peculiar sanctity, of all distinctions of one nation above another as possessing any especial privilege in the knowledge or favour of the Deity. The time was come when “neither in Jerusalem nor on the mountain of Gerizim,” was the great Universal Spirit to be worshipped with circumscribed or local homage. As long, however, as the Temple on Mount Moriah remained, hallowed by the reverence of ages, sanctified, according to the general belief, for perpetuity, by the especial command of God as his peculiar dwelling-place; so long, among the Jews at least, and even among other nations, the true principle of Christian worship might be counteracted by the notion of the inalienable sanctity of this one place. Judaism would scarcely be entirely annulled, so long as the Temple rose in its original majesty and veneration.

Yet, notwithstanding this absolute necessity for its destruction, notwithstanding that it thus stood, as it were, in the way of the progress of human advancement and salvation, the Son of Man does not contemplate its ruin without emotion. And in all the superhuman beauty of the character of Jesus, nothing is more affecting and impressive than the profound melancholy with which He foretells the future desolation of the city, which, before two days were passed, was to reek with his own blood. Nor should we do justice to this most remarkable incident in his life, if we should consider it merely as a sudden emotion of compassion, as the natural sensation of sadness at the decay or dissolution of that which has long worn the aspect of human grandeur. It seems rather a wise and far-sighted consideration, not merely of the approaching guilt and future penal doom of the city, but of the remoter moral causes, which, by forming the national character, influenced the national destiny; the long train of events, the wonderful combination of circum­stances, which had gradually wrought the Jewish people to that sterner frame of mind, too soon to display itself with such barbarous, such fatal ferocity. Jesus might seem not merely to know what was in man, but how it entered into man’s heart and mind. His was divine charity, enlightened by infinite wisdom.

In fact, there was an intimate moral connexion between the murder of Jesus and the doom of the Jewish city. It was the same national temperament, the same characteristic disposition of the people, which now morally disqualified them “from knowing,” in the language of Christ, “the things which belonged unto their peace,” which forty years afterwards committed them in their deadly and ruinous struggle with the masters of the world. Christianity alone could have subdued or mitigated that stubborn fanaticism which drove them at length to their desperate collision with the arms of Rome. As Christians, the Jewish people might have subsided into peaceful subjects of the universal empire. They might have lived, as the Christians did, with the high and inalienable consolations of faith and hope under the heaviest oppressions ; and calmly awaited the time when their holier and more beneficent ambition might be gratified by the submission of the lords of the world to the religious dominion founded by Christ and his Apostles. They would have slowly won that victory by the patient heroism of martyrdom and the steady perseverance in the dissemination of their faith, which it was madness to hope that they could ever obtain by force of arms. As Jews, they were almost sure, sooner or later, to provoke the implacable vengeance of their foreign sovereigns. The same vision of worldly dominion, the same obstinate expectation of a temporal Deliverer, which made them unable to comprehend the nature of the redemption to be wrought by the presence, and the kingdom to be established by the power, of Christ, continued to the end to mingle with their wild and frantic resistance.

In the rejection and murder of Jesus, the Rulers, as their interests and authority were more immediately endangered, were more deeply implicated than the people; but unless the mass of Jews, the people had been blinded by these false notions of the Messiah, they would not have demanded, or at least, with the general voice, assented to the sacrifice of Jesus. The progress of Jesus at the present period in the public estimation, his transient popularity, arose from the enforced admiration of his commanding demeanour, the notoriety of his wonderful works, perhaps, for such language is always acceptable to the common ear, from his bold animadversions on the existing authorities; but it was no doubt supported in the mass of the populace by a hope, that even yet He would conform to the popu­lar views of the Messiah’s character. Their present brief access of faith would not have stood long against the continued disappointment of that hope: and it was no doubt by working on the reaction of this powerful feeling, that the Sanhedrin were able so suddenly, and, it almost appears, so entirely, to change the prevailing sentiment. Whatever the proverbial versatility of the popular mind, there must have been some chord strung to the most sensitive pitch, the slightest touch of which would vibrate through the whole frame of society, and madden at least a commanding majority to their blind concurrence in this revolting iniquity. Thus in the Jewish nation, but more especially in the prime movers, the Rulers and the heads of the Pharisaic party, the murder of Jesus was an act of unmitigated cruelty, but, as we have said, it arose out of the generally fierce and bigoted spirit, which morally incapacitated the whole people from discerning the evidence of his mission from heaven, in his acts of divine goodness as well as of divine power. It was an act of religious fanaticism ; they thought, in the language of Jesus himself, that they were “doing God service” when they slew the Master, as much as afterwards when they persecuted his followers.

When however the last, and, as far as the existence of the nation, the most fatal display of this fanaticism took place, it was accidentally allied with nobler motives, with generous impatience of oppression, and the patriotic desire of national independence. However desperate and frantic the struggle against such irresistible power, the unprecedented tyranny of the later Roman procurators, Felix, Albinus, and Florus, might almost have justified the prudence of manly and resolute insurrection. Yet in its spirit and origin it was the same; and it is well known that even to the last, during the most sanguinary and licentious tumults in the Temple as well as the city, they never entirely lost sight of a deliverance from Heaven: God, they yet thought, would interpose in behalf of his chosen people. In short, the same moral state of the people (for the Rulers for obvious reasons were less forward in the resistance to the Romans), the same temperament and disposition now led them to reject Jesus and demand the release of Barabbas, which, forty years later, provoked the unrelenting vengeance of Titus, and deluged their streets with the blood of their own citizens. Even after the death of Jesus, this spirit might have been allayed, but only by a complete abandonment of all the motives which led to his crucifixion—by the general reception of Christianity in all its meekness, humility, and purity—by the tardy substitution of the hope of a moral, for that of temporal dominion. This unhappily was not the case: but it belongs to Jewish history to relate how the circumstances of the times, instead of assuaging or subduing, exasperated the people into madness; instead of predisposing to Christianity, confirmed the inveterate Ju­daism, and led at length to the accomplishment of their anticipated doom.

Altogether, then, it is evident, that it was this brood­ing hope of sovereignty, at least of political independence, moulded up with religious enthusiasm, and lurking, as it were, in the very heart’s core of the people, which rendered it impossible that the pure, the gentle, the humane, the unworldly and comprehensive doctrines of Jesus should be generally received, or his character appreciated, by a nation in that temper of mind; and the nation who could thus incur the guilt of his death, was prepared to precipitate itself to such a fate as at length it suffered.

Hence political sagacity might, perhaps, have anticipated the crisis, which could only be averted, by that which was morally impossible, the simultaneous conversion of the whole people to Christianity. Yet the distinctness, the minuteness, the circumstantial accuracy, with which the prophetic outline of the siege and fall of Jerusalem is drawn, bear, perhaps, greater evidence of more than human foreknowledge, than any other in the sacred volume : and in fact this profound and far-sighted wisdom, this anticipation of the remote political consequences of the reception or rejection of his doctrines, supposing Jesus but an ordinary human being, would be scarcely less extraordinary than prophecy itself.

Still though determined, at all hazards, to suppress the growing party of Jesus, the Sanhedrin were greatly embarrassed as to their course of proceeding. Jesus invariably passed the night without the walls, and only appeared during the daytime, though with the utmost publicity, in the Temple. His seizure in the Temple, especially during the festival, would almost inevitably lead to tumult, and (since it was yet doubtful on which side the populace would array themselves) tumult as inevitably to the prompt interference of the Roman authority. The Procurator, on the slightest indication of disturbance, without inquiring into the guilt or innocence of either party, might coerce both with equal severity; or, even without further examination, let loose the guard, always mounted in the gallery which connected the fortress of Antonia with the north-western corner of the Temple, to mow down both the conflicting parties in indiscriminate havoc. He might thus mingle the blood of all present, as he had done that of the Galileans, with the sacrificial offerings. To discover then where Jesus might be arrested without commotion or resistance from his followers, so reasonably to be apprehended, the treachery of one of his more immediate disciples was absolutely necessary; yet this was an event, considering the commanding influence possessed by Jesus over his followers, rather to be desired than expected.

On a sudden, however, appeared within their court one of the chosen Twelve, with a voluntary offer of assisting them in the apprehension of his Master. Much ingenuity has been displayed by some recent writers in attempting to palliate, or rather to account for, this extraordinary conduct of Judas; but the language in which Jesus spoke of the crime, appears to confirm the common opinion of its enormity. It has been suggested, either that Judas might expect Jesus to put forth his power, even after his apprehension, to elude or to escape from his enemies; and thus his avarice might calculate on securing the reward without being an accomplice in absolute murder, thus at once betraying his Master and defrauding his employers. According to others still higher motives may have mingled with his love of gain : he may have supposed, that by thus involving Jesus in difficulties otherwise inextricable, he would leave him only the alternative of declaring himself openly and authoritatively to be the Messiah, and so force him to the tardy accomplishment of the ambitious visions of his partisans. It is possible that the traitor may not have contemplated, or may not have permitted himself clearly to contemplate, the ultimate consequences of his crime: he may have indulged the vague hope, that if Jesus were really the Messiah, he bore, if we may venture the expression, “a charmed life,” and was safe in his inherent immortality (a notion in all likelihood inseparable from that of the Deliverer) from the malice of his enemies. If He were not, the crime of his betrayal would not be of very great importance. There were other motives which would concur with the avarice of Judas: the rebuke which he had received when he expostulated about the waste of the ointment, if it had not excited any feeling of exasperation against his Master, at least showed that his character was fully understood by the Saviour. He must have felt himself out of his element among the more honest and sincere disciples; nor can he have been actuated by any real or profound veneration for the exquisite perfection of a character so opposite to his own. And thus insincere and doubting, he may have shrunk from the approaching crisis, and as he would seize any means of extricating himself from that cause which had now become so full of danger, his covetousness would direct him to those means which would at once secure his own personal safety, and obtain the price, the thirty pieces of silver set by public proclamation on the head of Jesus.

Nor is the desperate access of remorse, which led to the public restitution of the reward, and to the suicide of the traitor, irreconcileable with the unmitigated heinousness of the treachery. Men coolly meditate a crime, of which the actual perpetration overwhelms them with horror. The general detestation, of which, no doubt, Judas could not but be conscious, not merely among his former companions, the followers of Jesus, but even among the multitude ; the supercilious coldness of the Sanhedrin, who, having employed him as their instrument, treat his recantation with the most contemptuous indifference, might overstrain the firmest, and work upon the basest mind: and even the unexampled sufferings and tranquil endurance of Jesus, however the betrayer may have calmly surveyed them when distant, and softened and subdued by his imagination, when present to his mind in their fearful reality, forced by the busy tongue of rumour upon his ears, perhaps not concealed from his sight, might drive him to desperation, little short of insanity.

It was on the last evening but one before the death of Jesus that the fatal compact was made: the next day, the last of his life, Jesus determines on returning to the city to celebrate the Feast of the Passover: his disciples are sent to occupy a room prepared for the purpose. His conduct and language before and during the whole repast clearly indicate his preparation for inevitable death. His washing the feel of the disciples, his prediction of his betrayal, his intimation to Judas that he is fully aware of his design, his quiet dismissal of the traitor from the assembly, his institution of the second characteristic ordinance of the new religion, his allusions in that rite to the supper breaking of his body, and the pouring forth of his blood, his prediction of the denial of Peter, his final address to his followers, and his prayer before lie left the chamber, are all deeply impregnated with the solemn melancholy, yet calm and unalterable composure, with which He looks forward to all the terrible details of his approaching, his almost immediate, sufferings. To his followers He makes, as it were, the valedictory promise, that his religion would not expire at his death, that his place would be filled by a mysterious Comforter, who was to teach, to guide, to console—the promise of the Holy Ghost, which was to be great Principle, and to the end the Life of Christianity.

This calm assurance of approaching death in Jesus is the more striking when contrasted with the inveterately Jewish notions of the Messiah’s kingdom, which even yet possess the minds of the Apostles. They are now fiercely contesting for their superiority in that earthly dominion, which even yet they suppose on the eve of its commencement. Nor does Jesus at this time altogether correct these erroneous notions, but in some degree falls into the prevailing language, to assure them of the distinguished reward which awaited his more faithful disciples. After inculcating the utmost humility by an allusion to the lowly fraternal service which He had just before performed in washing their feet, He describes the happiness and glory which they are at length to attain, by the strong, and no doubt familiar, imagery, of their being seated on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

The festival was closed according to the usage with the second part of the Hallel, the Psalms, from the 113th to the 118th inclusive, of which the former were customarily sung at the commencement, the latter at the end, of the paschal supper. Jesus with his disciples again departed from the room in the city where the feast had been held, probably down the Street of the Temple, till they came to the valley: they crossed the brook of Kidron, and began to ascend the slope of the Mount of Olives. Within the city no open space was left for gardens; but the whole neighbourhood of Jerusalem was laid out in inclosures for the convenience and enjoyment of the inhabitants. The historian of the war relates, not without feelings of poignant sorrow, the havoc made among these peaceful retreats by the devastating approaches of the Roman army. Jesus turned aside into one of these inclosures, which, it would seem from the subsequent history, was a place of customary retreat, well known to his immediate followers. The early hours of the night were passed by him in retired and devotional meditation, while the weary disciples are overpowered by involuntary slumber. Thrice Jesus returns to them, and each time He finds them sleeping. But to him it was no hour of quiet or repose. In the solitary garden of Gethsemane, Jesus, who in public, though confronting danger and suffering neither with stoical indifference, nor with the effort of a strong mind working itself up to the highest moral courage, but with a settled dignity, a calm and natural superiority, now, as it were, endured the last struggle of human nature. The whole scene of his approaching trial, his inevitable death, is present to his mind, and lor an instant He prays to the Almighty Father to release him from the task, which, although of such importance to the welfare of mankind, is to be accomplished by such fearful means. The next instant, however, the momentary weakness is subdued, and though the agony is so severe that the sweat falls like large drops of blood to the ground, he resigns himself at once to the will of God. Nothing can heighten the terrors of the coming scene so much, as its effect, in anticipation, on the mind of Jesus himself.

The devotions of Jesus and the slumbers of his followers, as midnight approached, were rudely interrupted. Jesus had rejoined his, now awakened, disciples for the last time; he had commanded them to rise, and be prepared for the terrible event. Still, no doubt, incredulous of the sad predictions of their Master—still supposing that his unbounded power would secure him from any attempt of his enemies, they beheld the garden filled with armed men, and gleaming with lamps and torches. Judas advances and makes the signal which had been agreed on, saluting his Master with the customary mark of respect, a kiss on the cheek, for which he receives the calm but severe rebuke of Jesus for thus treacherously abusing this mark of familiarity and attachment: “Judas, betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss?” The tranquil dignity of Jesus overawed the soldiers who first approached; they were most likely ignorant of the service on which they were employed; and when Jesus announces himself as the object of their search, they shrink back in astonishment, and fall to the earth. Jesus, however, covenanting only for the safe dismissal of his followers, readily surrenders himself to the guard. The fiery indignation of Peter, who had drawn his sword, and endeavoured, at least by his example, to incite the few adherents of Jesus to resistance, is repressed by the command of his Master: his peaceful religion disclaims all alliance with the acts or the weapons of the violent. The man whose ear had been struck off, was instantaneously healed; and Jesus, with no more than a brief and calm remonstrance against this ignominious treatment, against this arrestation, not in the face of day, in the public Temple, but at night, by men with arms in their hands, as though He had been a robber, allows himself to be led back, without resistance, into the city. His panic-stricken followers disperse on all sides, and Jesus is left, forsaken and alone, amid his mortal enemies.

The caprice, the jealousy, or the prudence, of the Roman government, as has been before observed, had in no point so frequently violated the feelings of the subject nation, as in the deposition of the High Priest, and the appointment of a successor to the office, in whom they might hope to place more implicit confidence. The stubbornness of the people, revolted by this wanton insult, persisted in honouring with the title those whom they could not maintain in the post of authority; all who had borne the office retained, in common language, the appellation of High Priest, if indeed the appellation was not still more loosely applied. Probably the most influential man in Jerusalem at this time was Annas, or , four of whose sons in turn either had been, or were subsequently, elevated to that high dignity now filled by his son-in-law, Caiaphas. The house of Annas was the first place to which Jesus was led, either that the guard might receive further instructions, or perhaps as the place of the greatest security, while the Sanhedrin was hastily summoned to meet at that untimely hour, towards, midnight or soon after, in the house of Caiaphas. Before the houses of the more wealthy in the East, or rather within the outer porch, there is usually a large square open court, in which public business is transacted, particularly by thos e who fill official stations. Into such a court, before the palace of Caiaphas, Jesus was led by the soldiers, and Peter, following unnoticed amid the throng, lingered before the porch until John, who happened to be familiarly known to some of the High Priest’s servants, obtained permission, for his entrance.

The first process seems to have been a private exami­nation, perhaps while the rest of the Sanhedrin were assembling, before the High Priest. He demanded of Jesus the nature of his doctrines, and the character of his disciples. Jesus appealed to the publicity of his teaching, and referred him to his hearers for an account of the tenets which He had advanced. He had no secret doctrines, either of tumult or sedition; He had ever spoken “ in public, in the synagogue, or in the Temple.”

And now the fearful scene of personal insult and violence began. An officer of the High Priest, enraged at the calm composure with which Jesus answered the interrogatory, struck him on the mouth (beating on the mouth, sometimes with the hand, more often with a thong of leather or a slipper, is still a common act of violence in the East). He bore the insult with the same equable placidity:—“If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; but if well, why smitest thou me?”

The more formal arraignment began: and, however hurried and tumultuous the meeting, the Sanhedrin, either desirous that their proceedings should be conducted with regularity, or, more likely, strictly fettered by the established rules of their court, perhaps by no means unanimous in their sentiments, were, after all, in the utmost embarrassment how to obtain a legal capital conviction. Witnesses were summoned, but the immutable principles of the Law, and the invariable practice of the tribunal, required, in every case of life and death, the agreement of two witnesses on some specific charge. Many were at hand, suborned by the enemies of Jesus, and hesitating at no falsehood; but their testimony was so confused, or bore so little on any capital charge, that the court was still further perplexed. At length two witnesses deposed to the misapprehended speech of Jesus, at his first visit to Jerusalem, relating to the destruction of the Temple. But even these depositions were so contradictory, that it was scarcely possible to venture on a conviction upon such loose and incoherent statements. Jesus, in the meantime, preserved a tranquil and total silence. He neither interrupted nor questioned the witnesses; He did not condescend to place himself upon his defence. Nothing, therefore, remained but to question the prisoner, and, if possible, to betray him into criminating himself. The High Priest, rising to give greater energy to his address, and adjuring him in the most solemn manner, in the name of God, to answer the truth, demands whether He is indeed the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Jesus at once answers in the affirmative, and adds a distinct allusion to the prediction of Daniel, then universally admitted to refer to the reign of the Messiah. His words may be thus paraphrased :—“Ye shall know me for that mighty King described by the prophet; ye shall know me when my great, eternal, and imperishable kingdom shall be established on the ruins of your Theocracy.”

The secret joy of the High Priest, though perhaps his devout horror was not altogether insincere, was disguised by the tone and gesture of religious indignation which he assumed. He rent his clothes; an act considered indecorous, almost indecent, in the High Priest, unless justified by an outrage against the established religion so flagrant and offensive as this declaration of Jesus. He pronounced that speech (strangely indeed did its lofty tone contrast with the appearance of the prisoner) to be direct and treasonable blasphemy. The whole court, either sharing in the indignation, or hurried away by the vehement gesture and commanding influence of the High Priest, hastily passed the fatal sentence, and declared Jesus guilty of the capital crime.

The insolent soldiery (as the Saviour was withdrawn from the court) had now licence, and perhaps more than the licence, of their superiors to indulge the brutality of their own dispositions. They began to spit on his face—in the East the most degrading insult; they blindfolded him, and struck him with the palms of their hands, and, in their miserable merriment, commanded him to display his prophetic knowledge by detecting the hand that was raised against him.

The dismay, the despair, which had seized upon his adherents, is most strongly exemplified by the denial of Peter. The zealous disciple, after he had obtained admittance into the hall, stood warming himself, in the cool of the dawning morning, probably by a kind of brazier. He was first accosted by a female servant, who charged him with being an accomplice of the prisoner: Peter denied the charge with vehemence, and retired to the portico or porch in front of the palace. A second time, another female renewed the accusation: with still more angry protestations Peter disclaimed all connexion with his Master; and once, but unregarded, the cock crew. An hour afterwards, probably about this time, after the formal condemnation, the charge was renewed by a relation of the man whose ear he had cut off. His harsh Galilean pronunciation had betrayed him as coming from that province; but Peter now resolutely confirmed his denial with an oath. It was the usual time of the second cock­crowing, and again it was distinctly heard. Jesus, who was probably at that time in the outer hall or porch in the midst of the insulting soldiery, turned his face towards Peter, who, overwhelmed with shame arid distress; hastily retreated from the sight of his deserted Master, and wept the bitter tears of self-reproach and humiliation.

But, although the Sanhedrin had thus passed their sentence, there remained a serious obstacle before it could be carried into execution. On the contested point, whether the Jews, under the Roman government, possessed the power of life and death, it is not easy to state the question with brevity and distinctness. Notwithstanding the apparently clear and distinct recognition of the Sanhedrin, that they had not authority to put any man to death; notwithstanding the remarkable concurrence of Rabbinical tradition with this declaration, which asserts that the nation had been deprived of the power of life and death forty years before the destruction of the city, many of the most learned writers, some indeed of the ablest of the Fathers, from arguments arising out of the practice of Roman provincial jurisprudence, and from later facts in the Evangelic history and that of the Jews, have supposed, that even if, as is doubtful, they were deprived of this power in civil, they retained it in religious, cases. Some have added, that even in the latter, the ratification of the sentence by the Roman governor, or the permission to carry it into execution, was necessary. According to this view, the object of the Sanhedrin was to bring the case before Pilate as a civil charge; since the assumption of a royal title and authority implied a design to cast off the Roman yoke. Or, if they retained the right of capital punishment in religious cases, it was contrary to usage, in the proceedings of the Sanhedrin, as sacred as law itself, to order an execution on the day of preparation for the Passover. As then they dared not violate that usage, and as delay was in every way dangerous, either from the fickleness of the people, who, having been momentarily wrought up to a pitch of deadly animosity against Jesus, might again, by some act of power or goodness on his part, be carried away back to his side, or, in case of tumult, from the unsolicited intervention of the Romans, their plainest course was to obtain, if possible, the immediate support and assistance of the government.

In my own opinion, formed upon the study of the relation cotemporary Jewish history, the power of the Sanhedrin, at this period of political change and confusion, on this, as well as on other points, was altogether undefined. Under the Asmonean princes, the sovereign, uniting the civil and religious supremacy, the High-Priesthood with the royal power, exercised, with the Sanhedrin as his council, the highest political and civil jurisdiction. Herod, whose authority depended on the protection of Rome, and was maintained by his wealth, and in part by foreign mercenaries, although he might leave to the Sanhedrin, as the supreme tribunal, the judicial power, and in ordinary religious cases might admit their unlimited jurisdiction, yet no doubt watched and controlled their proceedings with the jealousy of an Asiatic despot, and practically, if not formally, subjected all their decrees to his revision: at least he would not have permitted any encroachment on his own supreme authority. In fact, according to the general tradition of the Jews, he at one time put the whole Sanhedrin to death : and since, as his life advanced, his tyranny became more watchful and suspicious, he was more likely to diminish than increase the powers of the national tribunal. In the short interval of little more than thirty years which had elapsed since the death of Herod, nearly ten had been occupied by the reign of Archelaus. On his deposal, the Sanhedrin had probably extended or resumed its original functions, but still the supreme civil authority rested in the Roman Procurator. All the commotions excited by the turbulent adventurers who infested the country, or by Judas the Galilean and his adherents, would fall under the cognisance of the civil governor, and were repressed by his direct interference. Nor can capital religious offences have been of frequent occurrence, since it is evident that the rigour of the Mosaic Law had been greatly relaxed, partly by the feebleness of the judicial power, partly by the tendency of the age, which ran in a counter direction to those acts of idolatry against which the Mosaic statutes were chiefly framed, and left few crimes obnoxious to the extreme penalty. Nor until the existence of their polity and religion was threatened, first by the progress of Christ, and afterwards of his religion, would they have cared to be armed with an authority, which it was rarely, if ever, necessary or expedient to put forth in its full force..

This, then, may have been, strictly speaking, a new case, the first which had occurred since the reduction of Judaea to a Roman province. The Sanhedrin, from whom all jurisdiction in political cases was withdrawn, and who had no recent precedent for the infliction of capital punishment on any religious charge, might think it more prudent (particularly during this hurried and tumultuous proceeding, which commenced at midnight, and must be despatched with the least possible delay) at once to disclaim an authority which, however the Roman governor seemed to attribute it to them, he might at last prevent their carrying into execution. All the other motives then operating on their minds would concur in favour of this course of proceeding:—their mistrust of the people, who might attempt a rescue from their feeble and unrespected officers, and could only, if they should fall off to the other side, be controlled by the dread of the Roman military, and the reluctance to profane so sacred a day by a public execution, of which the odium would thus be cast on their foreign rulers. It was clearly their policy, at any cost, to secure the intervention of Pilate, as well to insure the destruction of their victim, as to shift the responsibility from their own head upon that of the Romans. They might, not unreasonably, suppose that Pilate, whose relentless disposition had been shown in a recent instance, would not hesitate, at once, and on their authority, on the first intimation of a dangerous and growing party, to act without further examination or inquiry; and without scruple, add one victim more to the robbers or turbulent insurgents who, it appears, were kept in prison, in order to be executed as a terrible example at that period of national concourse.

It would seem that while Jesus was sent in chains to the Praetorium of Pilate, whether in the Antonia, the fortress adjacent to the Temple, or in part of Herod’s palace, which was connected with the mountain of the Temple by a bridge over the Tyropaeon, the council adjourned to their usual place of assemblage, the chamber called Gazith, within the Temple. A deputation only accompanied the prisoner to explain and support the charge, and here probably it was, in the Gazith, that, in his agony of remorse, Judas  brought back the reward that he had received; and when the assembly, to his confession of his crime in betraying the innocent blood, replied with cold and contumelious unconcern, he cast down the money on the pavement, and rushed away to close his miserable life. Nor must the characteristic incident be omitted. The Sanhedrin, who had not hesitated to reward the basest treachery, probably out of the Temple funds, scruple to receive back, and to replace in the sacred Treasury, the price of blood. The sum, therefore, is set apart for the purchase of a field for the burial of strangers, long known by the name of Aceldama, the Field of Blood. Such is ever the absurdity, as well as the heinousness, of crimes committed in the name of religion.

The first emotion of Pilate at this strange accusation from the great tribunal of the nation, however rumours of the name and influence of Jesus had, no doubt, reached his ears, must have been the utmost astonishment. To the Roman mind the Jewish character was ever an inexplicable problem. But if so when they were seen scattered about and mingled with the countless diversities of races of discordant habits, usages, and religions, which thronged to the metropolis of the world, or were dispersed through the principal cities of the empire; in their own country, where there was, as it were, a concentration of all their extraordinary national propensities, they must have appeared, and did appear, in still stronger opposition to the rest of mankind. To the loose manner in which religious belief hung on the greater part of the subjects of the Roman empire, their recluse and uncompromising attachment to the faith of their ancestors offered the most singular contrast. Everywhere else the temples were open, the rites free to the stranger by race or country, who rarely scrupled to do homage to the tutelar deity of the place. The Jewish Temple alone received indeed, but with a kind of jealous condescension, the offerings even of the Emperor. Throughout the rest of the world, religious enthusiasm might not be uncommon; here and there, and in individual cases, particularly in the East, the priests of some of the mystic religions at times excited a considerable body of followers, and drove them blind­fold to the wildest acts of superstitious frenzy; but the sudden access of religious fervour was, in general, as transient as violent; the flame burned with rapid and irresistible fury, and went out of itself. The Jews stood alone (according to the language and opinion of the Roman world) as a nation of religious fanatics; and this fanaticism was a deep, a settled, a conscientious feeling, and formed, an essential and inseparable part, the groundwork of their rigid and unsocial character.

Yet even to one familiarised by a residence of several years with the Jewish nation, on the present occasion the conduct of the Sanhedrin must have appeared utterly unaccountable. This senate, or municipal body, had left to the Roman governor to discover the danger, and suppress the turbulence, of the robbers and insurgents against whom Pilate had taken such decisive measures. Now, however, they appear suddenly seized with an access of loyalty for the Roman authority and a trembling apprehension of the least invasion of the Roman title to supremacy. And against whom were they actuated by this unwonted caution, and burning with this unprecedented zeal? Against a man who, as far as Pilate could discover, was a harmless, peaceful, and benevolent enthusiast, who had persuaded many of the lower orders to believe in certain unintelligible doctrines, which seemed to have no relation to the government of the country, and were, as yet, no way connected with insurrectionary movements. In fact, Pilate could not but clearly see that they were jealous of the influence obtained by Jesus over the populace; but whether Jesus or the Sanhedrin governed the religious feelings and practices of the people, was a matter of perfect indifference to the Roman supremacy.

The vehemence with which they pressed the charge, and the charge itself, were equally inexplicable. When Pilate referred back, as it were, the judgement to themselves, and offered to leave Jesus to be punished by the existing law; while they shrank from that responsibility, and disclaimed, at least over such a case and at such a season, the power of life and death, they did not in the least relax the vehement earnestness of their prosecution. Jesus was accused of assuming the title of King of the Jews, and 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 disconnexion of religion and morality, the more striking contradiction in the conduct of the Jewish rulers may not have appeared altogether so extraordinary. At the moment when they were violating the great eternal and immutable principles of all religion, and infringing on 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 out the hall of Pilate; and not even their animosity against Jesus could induce them to depart from that superstitious usage, so as 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 ho went out to receive their charge, and to inquire the nature of the crime for which Jesus was denounced.

The simple question put to Jesus, on his first inter­rogatory before Pilate, was, whether He claimed the title of King of the Jews? The answer of Jesus may be considered as an appeal to the justice and right feeling of the Governor. “ Sayest thou this thing of thyself, Examination  others tell it thee of me?” “As Roman Prefect, have you 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 rulers. Am I a Jew? But Jesus had been brought before him, denounced as a dangerous disturber of the public peace, and the Roman Governor 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”;  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 as 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 save Jesus, 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 clamour, reiterated their vague, perhaps contradictory, and to the ears 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 Judaea to Galilee? This incidental mention of Galilee, made perhaps with an invidious design of awakening in the mind of the Governor 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 without 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.

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 the murder of John, Herod had incurred deep and lasting unpopularity; 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 a 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 the Saviour, 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 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. The multitude had already become clamorous for their annual privilege. Among the half-robbers, half-insurgents, who had so long infested the province of Judaea and the whole of Palestine, there was a celebrated bandit, named 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.

Pilate came forth, therefore, to the outside of his Praetorium, 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 partisans. 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. 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, as it is scarcely conceivable that life could have endured if the temples had been deeply pierced by a circle of thorns. In this pitiable state Jesus was again led forth, bleeding from the scourge, his brow throbbing with the pointed crown; and dressed 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. He was answered by the awful imprecation, “His blood be upon us, and upon our children”. The deputies of the Sanhedrin pressed more earnestly the capital charge of blasphemy—“He had made himself the Son of God.” 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 their husbands to the seat of their governments now having fallen into disuse) had been wife, permitted to reside with her husband Pilate in Palestine. 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 thehumaner counsels of his wife, from what a load of guilt would he have delivered his own conscience 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 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. But touched, it may seem, by the exertions of Pilate to save him, with all his accustomed gentleness. He declares Pilate guiltless of his blood, in comparison with his betrayers and persecutors among his own countrymen. This speech still further moved Pilate in favour of Jesus. But the justice and the compassion of the Roman gave way at once before the fear of weakening his own interest, or endangering his own 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 Caesar’s friend:” they threatened to report his conduct, in thus allowing the title of royalty to be assumed with impunity, to the reigning Caesar. That Caesar 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 hearing at Rome. Even against Herod the Great, their charges had been received; they had been admitted to a public audience; and though their claim to national independence at the death of that sovereign had not been allowed, Archelaus had received his government with limited powers, and on the complaint of the people had been removed from his throne. In short, the influence of that attachment to the Caesarean family which had obtained for the nation distinguished privileges from both Julius and Augustus, had not yet been effaced by that character of turbulence and insubordination which led to their final ruin.

In what manner such a charge of not being “Caesar’s friend” might be misrepresented or aggravated, it was impossible to conjecture; but the very strangeness of the accusation was likely to work on the gloomy and suspicious mind of Tiberius; and the frail tenure by which Pilate held his favour at Rome is shown by his ignominious recall and banishment some years after, on the complaint of the Jewish people; though not, it is true, for an act of indiscreet mercy, but one of unnecessary cruelty. The latent and suspended decision of his character reappeared in all its customary recklessness. The life of one man, however blameless, was not for an instant to be considered, when his own advancement, his personal safety, were in peril: his sterner nature resumed the ascendant; he mounted the tribunal, which was erected on a tesselated pavement near the Praetorium, and passed the solemn, the irrevocable sentence. It might almost seem that, in bitter mockery, Pilate for the last time demanded, Shall I crucify Jesus, your king?” “We have no king, but Caesar,” was the answer of the Chief Priests. Pilate yielded up the contest; the murderer was commanded to be set at liberty, the Just man surrendered to crucifixion.

The remorseless soldiery were at hand, and instigated, no doubt, by the influence, by the bribes, of the Sanhedrin, carried the sentence into soldiery. effect with the most savage and wanton insults. They dressed him up in all the mock semblance of royalty (He had already the purple robe and the crown); a reed was now placed in his hand for a sceptre; they paid him their insulting homage; struck him with the palms of their hands; spat upon him; and then stripping him of his splendid attire, dressed him again in his own simple raiment, and led him out to death.

The place of execution was without the gates. This was the case in most towns; and in Jerusalem, which, according to tradition, always maintained a kind of resemblance to the camp in the wilderness, as criminal punishments were forbidden to defile the sacred precincts, a field beyond the walls was set apart and desecrated for this unhallowed purpose.

Hitherto I have been tempted into some detail, both by the desire of ascertaining the state of the public mind, and the motives of the different actors in this unparalleled transaction, and by the necessity of harmonising the various circumstances related in the four separate narratives. As we approach the appalling close, I tremble lest the colder process of explanation should deaden the solemn and harrowing impression of the scene, or weaken the contrast between the wild and tumultuous uproar of the triumphant enemies and executioners of the Son of Man, with the deep and unutterable misery of the few faithful adherents who still followed his footsteps: and, far above all, his own serene, his more than human, composure, the dignity of suffering, which casts so far into the shade every example of human heroism. Yet in the most trifling incidents there is so much life and reality, so remarkable an adherence to the usages of the time and to the state of public feeling, that I cannot but point out the most striking of these particulars. For, in fact, there is no single circumstance, however minute, which does not add to the truth of the whole description, so as to stamp it (I have honestly endeavoured to consider it with the calmest impartiality) with an impression of credibility, of certainty, equal to, if not surpassing, every event in the history of man. The inability of Jesus (exhausted by a sleepless night, by the length of the trial, by insults and bodily pain, by the scourging and the blows) to bear his own cross (the constant practice of condemned criminals); the seizure of a Cyrenian, from a province more numerously colonised by Jews than any other, except Egypt and Babylonia, as he was entering the city, and, perhaps, was known to be an adherent of Jesus, to bear the cross; the customary deadening potion of wine and myrrh, which was given to malefactors previous to their execution, but which Jesus, aware of its stupifying or intoxicating effect, and determined to preserve his firmness and self-command, but slightly touched with his lips; the title, the King of the Jews, in three languages so strictly in accordance with the public usage of the time; the division and casting lots for his garments by the soldiers who executed him (those who suffered the ignominious punishment of the cross being exposed entirely naked, or with nothing more than was necessary for decency); all these particulars, as well as the instrument of execution, the cross, are in strict unison with the well-known practice of Roman criminal jurisprudence. The execution of the two malefactors, one on each side of Jesus, is equally consonant with their ordinary administration of justice, particularly in this ill-fated province. Probably before, unquestionably at a later period, Jerusalem was doomed to behold the long line of crosses on which her sons were left by the relentless Roman authorities to struggle with slow and agonising death.

In other circumstances the Jewish national character is equally conspicuous. This appears even in the conduct of the malefactors. The fanatical Judaism of one, not improbably a follower, or infected with the doctrines of the Gaulonite, even in his last agony, has strength enough to insult the pretender to the name of a Messiah who yet has not the power to release himself and his fellow-sufferers from death. The other, of milder disposition, yet in death, inclines to believe in Jesus, and when he returns to assume his kingdom, would hope to share in its blessings. To him Jesus, speaking in the current, and therefore intelligible, language, promises an immediate reward; he is to pass at once from life to happiness—from the cross to Paradise. Besides this, how striking the triumph of his enemies, as the Lord seemed to surrender himself without resistance to the growing pangs of death; the assembling, not only of the rude and ferocious populace, but of many of the most distinguished rank, the members of the Sanhedrin, to behold and to insult the last moments of their once redoubted, but now despised, adversary!

And still every indication of approaching death seemed more and more to justify their rejection!—still no sign of the mighty, the all-powerful Messiah! Their taunting allusions to his royal title, to his misapprehended speech, which rankled in their hearts, about the demolition and rebuilding of the Temple; to his power of healing others, and restoring life, a power in his own case so manifestly suspended or lost; the offer to acknowledge him as the Messiah, if he would come down from the cross in, the face of day; the still more malignant reproach, that He, who had boasted of the peculiar favour of God, was now so visibly deserted and abandoned,—the Son of Man, as He called himself, is left to perish despised and disregarded by God; all this as strikingly accords with, and illustrates the state of, Jewish feeling, as do the former circumstances the Roman usages.

And amid the whole wild and tumultuous scene there are some quiet gleams of pure Christianity, which contrast with and relieve the general darkness and horror: not merely the superhuman patience, with which insult, and pain, and ignominy, are borne; not merely the serene self-command, which shows that the senses are not benumbed or deadened by the intensity of suffering; but the slight incidental touches of gentleness and humanity. I cannot but indicate the answer to the afflicted women, who stood by the way weeping, as Jesus passed on to Calvary, and whom He commanded not “to weep for him,” but for the deeper sorrows to which themselves or their children were devoted; the notice of the group of his own kindred and followers who stood by the cross; his bequest of the support of his Virgin Mother to the beloved disciple; above all, that most affecting exemplification of his own tenets, the prayer for the pardon of his enemies, the palliation of their crime from their ignorance of its real enormity,—“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Yet so little are the Evangelists studious of effect, that this incident of unrivalled moral sublimity, even in the whole life of Christ, is but briefly, we might almost say carelessly, noticed by St. Luke alone.

From the sixth hour (noonday), writes the Evangelist St. Matthew, there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. The whole earth (the term in the other Evangelists) is no doubt used according to Jewish phraseology, in which Palestine, the sacred land, was emphatically the earth. This supernatural gloom appears to resemble that terrific darkness which precedes an earthquake.

For these three hours Jesus had borne the excruciating anguish—his human nature begins to fail, and he complains of the burning thirst, the most painful but usual aggravation of such a death. A compassionate bystander filled a sponge with vinegar, fixed it on a long reed, and was about to lift it to his lips, when the dying Jesus uttered his last words, those of the Twenty-second Psalm, in which, in the bitterness of his heart, David had complained of the manifest desertion of his God, who had yielded him up to his enemies—the phrase had perhaps been in common use in extreme distress—Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?—My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” The compassionate hand of the man, raising the vinegar, was arrested by others, who, a few perhaps in trembling curiosity, but more in bitter mockery, supposing that He called not on God (Eli) but on Elias, commanded him to wait and see, whether, even now, that great and certain sign of the Messiah, the appearance of Elijah, would at length take place.

Their barbarous triumph was uninterrupted; and He, who yet (his followers were not without some lingering hope, and the more superstitious of his enemies not without some trembling apprehension) might awaken to all his terrible and prevailing majesty, had now manifestly expired. The Messiah, the imperishable, the eternal Messiah, had quietly yielded up the ghost.

Even the dreadful earthquake which followed, seemed to pass away without appalling the enemies of Jesus. The rending of the veil of the Temple from the top to the bottom, so strikingly significant of the approaching abolition of the local worship, would either be concealed by the priesthood, or attributed as a natural effect to the convulsion of the earth. The same convulsion would displace the stones which covered the ancient tombs, and lay open many of the innumerable rock-hewn sepulchres which perforated the hills on every side of the city, and expose the dead to public view. To the awestruck and depressed minds of the followers of Jesus, no doubt, were confined those visionary appearances of the spirits of their deceased brethren, which are obscurely intimated in the rapid narratives of the Evangelists.

But these terrific appearances, which were altogether lost on the infatuated Jews, were not without effect on the less prejudiced Roman soldiery; they seemed to bear the testimony of Heaven to the innocence, to the divine commission, of the crucified Jesus. The centurion who guarded the spot, according to St. Luke, declared aloud his conviction that Jesus was “a just man”; according to St. Matthew, that He was “ the Son of God.”

Secure now, by the visible marks of dissolution, by the piercing of his side, from which blood and water flowed out, that Jesus was actually dead; and still, even in their most irreligious acts of cruelty and wickedness, punctiliously religious (since it was a sin to leave the body of that blameless being on the cross during one day whom it had been no sin, but rather an act of the highest virtue, to murder the day before), the Sanhedrin gave their consent to a wealthy adherent of Jesus, Joseph, of the town of Arimathea, to bury the body. The sanction of Pilate was easily obtained : it was taken down from the cross, and consigned to the sepulchre prepared by Joseph for his own family, but in which no body had yet been laid. The sepulchre was at no great distance from the place of execution; the customary rites were performed; the body was wrapped in fine linen and anointed with a mixture of costly spice and myrrh, with which the remains of those who were held in respect by their kindred were usually preserved. As the Sabbath was drawing on, the work was performed with the utmost despatch, and Jesus was laid to rest in the grave of his faithful adherent.

In that rock-hewn tomb might appear to be buried for ever both the fears of his enemies and the  hopes of his followers. Though some rumours of his predictions concerning his resurrection had crept abroad, sufficient to awaken the caution of the Sanhedrin, and to cause them to seal the outward covering of the sepulchre, and, with the approbation of Pilate, to station a Roman guard upon the spot; yet, as far as the popular notion of the Messiah, nothing could be more entirely and absolutely destructive of their hopes than the patient submission of Jesus to insult, to degradation, to death. However, with some of milder nature, his exquisite sufferings might excite compassion; however the savage and implacable cruelty with which the Rulers urged his fate might appear revolting to the multitude, after their first access of religious indignation had passed away, and the recollection returned to the gentle demeanour and beneficent acts of Jesus; yet the hope of redemption, whatever meaning they might attach to the term, whether deliverance from their enemies or the restoration of their theocratic government, had set in utter darkness. However vague or contradictory this notion among the different sects or classes, with the mass of the people, nothing less than an immediate instantaneous reappearance in some appalling or imposing form could have reinstated Jesus in his high place in the popular expectation. Without this, his career was finally closed, and He would pass away at once, as one of the brief wonders of the time, his temporary claims to respect or attachment refuted altogether by the shame, by the ignominy, of his death. His ostensible leading adherents were men of the humblest origin, and, as yet, of no distinguished ability; men from whom little danger could be apprehended, and who might safely be treated with contemptuous neglect. No attempt appears to have been made to secure a single person, or to prevent their peaceful retreat to their native Galilee. The whole religion centered in the person of Jesus, and in his death was apparently suppressed, crushed, extinguished for ever. After a few days, the Sanhedrin would dread nothing less than a new disturbance from the same quarter; and Pilate, as the whole affair had passed off without tumult, would soon suppress the remonstrances of his conscience at the sacrifice of an innocent life, since the public peace had been maintained, and no doubt his own popularity with the leading Jews considerably heigh