assert with confidence that the two accounts directly contradict one another, or that any explanation given is certainly the true one. The consultation among the priests, and the purchase of the potter's field, probably took place at a later period, and not on the day of the crucifixion.

11-31.- JESUS BEFORE PILATE.

It is necessary to compare the Evangelists carefully with one another to get a clear and full account of these transactions. Matthew alone, 19, speaks of the message sent to Pilate by his wife, and of his washing his hands, 24, in token of his innocency. Luke alone (xxiii. 7-12) mentions the fact that Jesus was sent away to Herod. John (xix. 1-13) enters more fully into the state of Pilate's mind, his conversations with Jesus, and his repeated efforts to induce the Jews to set him free.

While it was yet early in the morning (John xviii. 28) Jesus was taken to the Prætorium, or hall of judgment, in the tower of Antonia, a little north of the temple, where he stood before the governor. This Prætorium This Prætorium is the same as the hall (Mark xv. 16) or open court in the centre of the building, while in front of the palace was apparently a wide open space with a tessellated pavement, where Pilate on that day placed his judgment-seat (John xix. 13). The Jews on account of their religious scruples could not enter the court, lest it should make them unclean, and unfit for the feast. Pilate, therefore, several times during the trial passed back and forth between the Jews in front of the palace and Jesus, who, with the Roman soldiers, was in the Prætorium. Two or three times Jesus was taken out into the presence of the Jews. Bearing these things in mind, we may get a clear view of the transactions of the morning. Jesus is brought into the Prætorium (John xviii. 28-32). Pilate comes out and asks the chief priests and rulers what their accusation against him is? They reply, “If he were

not a malefactor, we should not have delivered him up unto thee." This vague form of accusation did not suit the Roman governor's ideas of a judicial trial, and he told them that they had better take him and condemn him according to their law. They said, in reply, what he undoubtedly knew perfectly all the time, that they had no legal authority to put any man to death. Then they began (Luke xxiii. 2) to accuse him of perverting the nation, of forbidding to give tribute to Cæsar, and of making himself to be Christ a king, or an anointed king. Then Pilate went back into the Prætorium, and had with Jesus the conversation which is most fully recorded in John xviii. 33 – 38, - a conversation which evidently produced a very strong impression upon his mind. He then went out to the Jews, probably taking Jesus with him, to declare that he found no fault in him. And when they, growing more urgent, spoke of Jesus as beginning his work of insurrection in Galilee (Luke xxiii. 5 – 12), Pilate sent him to Herod, who probably occupied the magnificent palace built by Herod the Great, in the western part of the city, near the Tower of Hippicus. More than an hour probably intervened before Jesus was brought back to the Prætorium. Pilate then called the Jewish rulers together again, and after asserting that neither he nor Herod found any fault in Jesus, he proposed to set him free, since it had been his custom always to set some prisoner free at this festival. Just at this time, while he was sitting on the judgment-seat outside the palace, he received a message from his wife, warning him to have nothing to do "with that righteous man ;" "for," she said, "I have suffered many things this day in a dream, because of him." Her language shows that she must have known the reputation which Jesus had for purity and sanctity. Her message must have added to the perplexity and awe of Pilate. For dreams were regarded by many of the Greeks and Romans as sent from the gods. The classical reader will call to mind the expression of Homer, "for dreams are from Jupiter," and the

warning dream by which Cæsar's wife endeavored to keep him at home on the day when he was assassinated in the Capitol. Pilate redoubled his efforts to release Jesus. But the multitude had been already persuaded by the chief priests and elders, and only became the more clamorous for the blood of their victim. He then, to express in the strongest and most solemn terms his sense of the prisoner's innocence, took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, "I am innocent of the blood of this righteous man; see ye to it." And all the people answered, “His blood be on us, and on our children; an imprecation fearfully and terribly fulfilled in the manifold sufferings and slaughters which attended the destruction of Jerusalem before that generation had passed away. Pilate now gave him up to his soldiers to scourge and mock him; but even then (John xix. 4–12) he tried again and again to awaken their compassion. The majestic and mysterious bearing of his prisoner, the message from his wife, and the character of the charges against the prisoner created in him a sentiment of awe, and perhaps of superstitious fear. Whether any, however distant, perception of the truth touched him, is not shown by either of the narratives. We have no right to judge him by the Christian standard, and condemn him because he did not receive Christ as the Son of God. But we have a right to judge him by his own law, and to condemn him, because, in spite of the warnings and misgivings which he had, he weakly and wickedly, against his own convictions, consented to condemn the prisoner, in violation of the law by which he was to be judged.

32-61.—THE CRUCIFIXION.

We come now to the most solemn, the most affecting, the most significant and majestic event in the history of our Here is the deepest and most touching expression of God's love, stooping with infinite compassion to save man

race.

from sin and the misery consequent upon it. We shrink from interrupting the account by any critical remarks, and give the narrative as we find it in the four Evangelists, reserving our comments for the notes at the end of the chapter.

Jesus, being worn down by the sorrows and watchings of the night, and the indignities and sufferings to which he was subjected after his apprehension, especially the scourging which had just been administered, the cross was bound upon his shoulders, and a little before the third hour, or nine o'clock in the morning, he went bearing his own cross with pain, as the expression (John xix. 17) seems to intimate, towards a place called Golgotha. A man named Simon, a Cyrenian, who had come in from the country, having shown probably some marks of pity for the sufferer, was compelled to lift up the end of the cross, and, perhaps without materially lightening the Saviour's burden, was made to share the insults and mockery that were heaped upon him. This Cyrenian, however, was not the only one who sympathized with him in his sorrows. In the midst of that scoffing multitude who were howling after him, and making him the butt of their impious jests, was a great number of people, especially of women, who were lamenting and bewailing him. Jesus turned towards them, and, thinking of the terrible calamities which were to fall on them and their children (Luke xxiii. 28), he said, "Daughters of Jerusalem! weep not for me; but weep for yourselves and for your children.'

In a short time their mournful journey was finished, and they reached the spot whose name must always be sacred in the thoughts and affections of the Christian world. There they crucified him, having previously stripped him of his garments and offered him a stupefying potion, which, when he had tasted it, he refused to drink. Either at the moment when they were driving the nails through his hands and his feet, or at the moment of excruciating anguish when the cross, with his body nailed to it, reaching an upright position, sunk down with a shock into the hole prepared for it in the

earth, the sharp and sudden agony wrenched from him, as in a shriek, the cry, his first utterance on the cross, "Father! forgive them; for they know not what they are doing." Now the cruel and blasphemous acts of mockery and scorn were renewed, Jewish priests and Roman soldiers, rulers and people alike, wagging their heads as they passed by, and scoffing at him and his sufferings. Even one of the two malefactors who were crucified with him, one on either side, joined in the revilings, and said scoffing (Luke xxiii. 39), "If thou art the Christ, save thyself and us." But the other, subdued by what he had seen of divine benignity in Jesus, after rebuking his companion, said to Jesus, "Remember me, when thou comest in thy kingdom." Jesus, moved with compassion towards him, said, and this was his second utterance on the cross, "Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise."

The long hours of torture passed. Near the cross where he hung helpless and submissive in his agony stood (John xix. 25) Mary, the mother of Jesus, and her sister, and Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus, therefore, saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing by her, he said to his mother (this was his third utterance on the cross), "Woman, behold thy son," and to the disciple, "Behold thy mother." "Everything which she had experienced in the happiest part of her life had now become darkened to her; doubts agitated her,” and unable to bear longer a sight so full of anguish, which, turning her hopes into despair, pierced as a sword through her soul, she allowed herself to be taken away, "and from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.”

It was noonday, when darkness overspread all the land, and continued for three hours. The sufferings on the cross now reached their sharpest and most dreadful extremity. There is no record of any word that was spoken, or of any act or sound to break the terrible stillness of the scene. For three hours forward from that awful moment when at