Cæsar." And before that threat Pilate's courage finally collapses. He dare not risk accusation to Cæsar for the sake of Christ. He is once more the man of the world, with whom self-interest is supreme. Jesus must die that Pilate's reputation may be saved. He hastily, and with words of mockery which cover his own shame, gives the brief order that Jesus shall be crucified. Jesus submits in perfect silence; had He spoken, surely His last word to Pilate would have been, "What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”

Thus ended the trial of Jesus Christ. It was from first to last a travesty of justice. Not one of the charges urged against Him was proved. He had been thrice declared absolutely innocent by the man who finally condemns Him. In the course of the trial we see Him brought into close contact with the entire priestly hierarchy, with a King, and with a military Governor who represents all the might of Rome. He is superior to all. They each in turn serve as foils to throw into relief His dignity and purity. His fortitude and courage, His self-restraint and magnanimity, are conspicuous throughout. No one can mistake the fact that He goes to His death in perfect innocence. As little can we fail to see that He goes triumphantly; the victim indeed, but to the last the Victor-Victim,

CHAPTER XXIX

THE DEATH OF JESUS

THE priests and the Jewish mob had themselves demanded the crucifixion of Jesus. Had they been capable of the least reflection they would have understood the insult which they affixed upon the whole Jewish nation by the demand; for crucifixion was a form of death reserved only for the most servile. It was not strictly a Roman form of punishment at all, and in her purer and prouder days Rome would have disdained to employ a means of death so gratuitously brutal. Rome had borrowed it from the East, probably from the Phoenicians, the most corrupt and cruel of all the races who have raised themselves to empire. She reserved it for the East, as if to affirm her undying contempt for peoples whom she regarded as unworthy of any reverence. The Cross was thus the symbol of national shame and degradation. No Roman, however vile, was crucified. It was a death so cruel in itself, so dishonoring and shameful, that Rome reserved it for those whom she regarded as the vermin of the human race, who were too obnoxious to claim the privilege of partnership in her social order. But on this disastrous day it seemed as if the whole Jewish race were bent on national suicide. In order to compass the death of Jesus the priests had openly avowed that they had no king but Cæsar. Patriotism itself had perished in the paroxysm of rage against a person. The ideas for which the nation had fought and struggled with a splendid obstinacy through so many years of subjugation, were in a moment thrown away. And it is

the same kind of madness which we discern in the demand for the crucifixion of Jesus. It matters nothing to the people that the Cross is the symbol of national degradation, and that for a Jew, however guilty, to die by such a death, is an insult to the whole nation; it is the death which they themselves demanded for their noblest Son. That they may the more effectually dishonor Jesus they are willing to dishonor the entire race; nor can they see, in this madness of revenge that it is not Jesus only, but the nation itself, that is put to an open shame.

It was about nine o'clock in the morning when the final order was given for the execution of Jesus. The place of execution is minutely described to us as Golgotha, or the place of a skull, a small hill near the city, and immediately beyond its gates. There is but one place discoverable in modern Jerusalem which entirely fulfils the descriptions of the Evangelists. It is a green hill, with a precipitous limestone cliff, which bears an unmistakable likeness to a human skull. It is at a point where great roads converge, open and public, so that it would be possible for a great concourse of people to assemble, each of whom would be able to see all that occurred upon the hill itself, and to read the inscription which Pilate wrote above the Cross. The hill rises immediately outside the Damascus Gate, which in earlier times was called the Gate of Stephen, because tradition asserts that the first martyr suffered death in its immediate vicinity. To this day the hill is known among the Jews as the Hill of Execution, and it is said that he who passes it breathes to himself the strange words, "Cursed be He who destroyed our nation by aspiring to be its king." At the foot of the hill is a garden, in which a rock sepulchre has lately been discovered, certainly dating from the days of Herod, and almost certainly the tomb in which the body of Jesus lay.

It was to this hill that the sad procession now passed. First of all marched the centurion charged with the execution of the sentence, who bore aloft the tablet on which the offence of Jesus was described, "This is Jesus, the King of the Jews." Next followed the soldiers, carrying the instruments of execution, and behind them came Jesus Himself bearing the Cross. Two other prisoners doomed to the same death accompanied Him: a refinement of derision on the part of Pilate, addressed to the Jews rather than to Jesus, whom he wished to insult not only by the inscription on the tablet, but by making their King the companion of thieves in His death. The whole multitude followed behind, conspicuous among whom were some of the friends of Jesus, and many women who wept aloud, and smote their breasts, after the custom of mourners at a Jewish funeral. Immediately outside the Damascus Gate, the procession halted, for Jesus was now at the ascent of the hill, and could no longer bear the Cross. A man coming in from the country, known as Simon of Cyrene, was hastily impressed for this duty by the Roman soldiers, who had too great a scorn of the Cross to offer the Sufferer the least help in sustaining it. The plateau of the hill was soon reached. The Sufferer was then bound upon the Cross, which was raised, and fastened into the cavity prepared for it. Heavy nails were driven through the hands and feet of Jesus, and the horrible torture of the crucifixion began.

The peculiar feature of death by crucifixion was its ignominy. It was a form of death with which it was impossible to associate the least idea of dignity; its associations were altogether sordid and depraved. The fact that a man dies by public execution may be painful to remember, but it is not necessarily dishonorable or shameful. Socrates was executed, but it was under circumstances which did not make

personal dignity impossible. Many martyrs have died upon the scaffold and at the stake; but while men may have been disgusted at the barbarity of the means of death employed, none have felt them to be inherently shameful. The common form of Jewish execution was by stoning; but barbarous as this death was, yet is was so little shameful that there had been those who still were heroes in Jewish memory in spite of the nature of their death. But crucifixion involved a kind of shame beyond shame: indelible, odious, and utterly revolting. Among civilized nations who allow the penalty of death for capital offences, it is generally agreed that the means of death employed should be swift. Justice is content with the fact of death, and does not demand torture. But in crucifixion the pangs of dissolution were prolonged and public. It was no unusual thing for a criminal to hang upon his cross for several days, expiring at last from sheer exhaustion. The modesty of death itself was violated in this prolonged public exhibition of a dreadful agony. Exposed to a pitiless sun, racked with a furious thirst, often derided by the passers-by, liable to the attacks of vultures while yet consciousness survived-it was so that men died upon the Cross, under every aggravation of atrocity. It was little wonder, therefore, that the Cross was regarded with a peculiar abhorrence. It was the symbol of an infamy so complete that even pity was alienated: of a dishonor so dire that the mind refused its contemplation.

The truly astonishing thing in the death of Jesus is that by the manner of His dying He utterly destroyed these evil associations of the Cross, and replaced them with ideas of inexhaustible beauty and significance. He died with a dignity which triumphed absolutely over the indignity of the Cross. The gibbet of the slave lost its shame from the moment Christ was nailed upon it. That which had been loath