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Men of the Bible

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disturbed by a dream about him. Romans were slaves to omens and auguries, and the most materialistic of them felt some awe of dreams, although they had lost faith in real religion. Your confirmed sceptic is often slavishly superstitious in the secret of his soul. It is a way the spiritual has of avenging itself on the man who openly flouts it. Boldly flung out of the window, it creeps back into the cellar and vexes the soul with petty tricks played on the subterranean consciousness. The man who expels his good angel is haunted by imps and elves. He who will not believe in God and despises truth succumbs to the message of a dream. More anxious now than ever to escape responsibility, Pilate calls for water and publicly washes his hands, telling the Jews that the innocent blood will be on their heads. They accept the awful responsibility. What do they care for the weak Roman's scruples? He is doing their will, and of course no hand-washing can cleanse his conscience from the stain of guilty compliance. Yet one thing more Pilate will do. He will scourge Jesus. Perhaps that may satisfy these savage Jews. For scourging was a savage punishment. The whip was loaded with lead and sharp fish-bones, and at every stroke the flesh was cut. Men often died under this severe treatment. Pilate had it inflicted on Jesus, knowing Him to be innocent; but hoping that, if He survived, no more might be required. It was an abominable compromise. If Jesus were innocent--and Pilate knew He was innocent--He should have been set free unscathed, with apologies for a mistaken arrest. If he were guilty, of course he ought to receive the death-penalty for the crime of treason. Justice could allow of no middle course. But Pilate is not thinking of Justice. He only wants to escape the onus of killing an innocent man. Then he has Jesus brought forth, bleeding, in agony, His lacerated flesh exposed to the view of that heartless multitude. "_Behold the man_," says Pilate. "Look at your victim; is not this enough?" If Pilate thought his appeal _ad misericordiam_ would touch those hardened sinners of the Sanhedrin, he was strangely mistaken. The sight of their victim in His agony only maddens them. They are like hounds who had tasted blood. Like hounds, they "give tongue," and yell for His death. Pilate can resist no longer. He has played his last card, and it has been taken. Thoroughly humiliated and quite helpless, he gives sentence, and so in spite of the governor's desperate efforts to escape the stigma of his awful crime, it goes down to all the ages that Jesus was "crucified under Pontius Pilate." BARABBAS BY REV. J. G. GREENHOUGH, M.A. "And they cried out all at once, saying, Away with this man, and release unto us Barabbas."--ST LUKE xxiii. 18. You have heard a crowd of people cry out all at once. It is always impressive, it is sometimes very terrible, occasionally it is sublime. It begins in a way that no one can explain. Somebody in the crowd utters a name, or ejaculates a brief sentence. What happens? Often nothing at all. Men are not in the mood for it; it drops unnoticed, or provokes a jeer or two and is then forgotten. But sometimes the word falls like a spark on a mass of dry tinder--ten thousand hearts have been prepared for it--swift as a flash of lightning a sympathetic current passes through the whole throng--ten thousand lips take up the cry. They are all carried away by contagion, magnetism, or madness, and a shout goes up enough to rend the sky. When some great and noble sentiment has laid hold of them, the shout of a people is one of the grandest things on earth; when it is some awful prejudice, unreasoning hatred, or cowardly terror that sways them, the shout is the most inhuman and hellish thing on earth; and that was the character of the shout that was raised here. The world has never forgotten that cry, and never will. To the very last the world will wonder how it should have come to be raised, and will condemn and pity the crowd of people who gave themselves up to it, for they were making a hero of the vilest stuff, and clamouring for the murder of the world's one Divine man. There never was a more brutal and insane shout than that; never again can there be a choice so fatal and so suicidal as the choice they made: "_Away with this man, and release unto us Barabbas_." If the thing had not happened, we should say it was impossible. It seems well-nigh incredible that human eyes and human hearts could be so blind. A story of this kind is food for the bitterest cynic. He who has the most utter contempt for the race to which he belongs might find here almost a justification of his scorn. Oh what a satire upon human nature, that a whole city full of people, men, women, mothers and daughters, had come to this pass that they could not discern which was the nobler of these two--nay, thought that Barabbas was more deserving of their honour. One the very flower and crown of humanity, the express image of God; and the other a gaol bird, a notorious criminal, whose hands had been dyed red, and whose heart had been hardened by the shedding of blood. Well might those pitiful lips say, "_Father forgive them, for they know not what they do_." Why did they do it? Why did they raise their voices for Barabbas? The main answer is that men make their heroes as the heathen make gods, after their own image. There is no doubt that Barabbas was more to the taste of this people, more according to their heart, than Christ; or at least they thought he was; not quite their ideal man, perhaps, but certainly nearer to their ideal than the Christ whom they rejected. It may be that they had had no particular love for him until just now, possibly they had hardly thought of him at all; but now it was a question between this man and Jesus, and Jesus they did not want at any price. And their very hatred of the one made the other look beautiful. Barabbas is our man, they said, and the more they said it the more they believed it; and each time the name was repeated it sounded sweeter, until they were all shouting it, nine-tenths of them because the others shouted it, and until they really made themselves believe that in this man they had got a veritable hero and hardly less than a god.

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