READING HALLTHE DOORS OF WISDOM |
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 |
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