TEE TRIAL OF JESUS CEEIST. 



69 



false accusers who sat in Mosss's seat. It was 

 not strange that the words should have prompted 

 one last effort on the judge's part to save himself 

 from his weakness ; but it was too late. The 

 Jewish hierarchs had now taken the full measure 

 of the man, and their final argument was one fit- 

 ted to bear down in him all of conscience that 

 remained. "If thou let this man go, thou art 

 not Caesar's friend : whosoever maketh himself a 

 kiDg speaketh against Caesar." Few utterances 

 are more valuable historically than this last gen- 

 eral statement. To feel the full force of it we 

 must recall how, as already explained, the Caesar 

 had gathered up in himself all the public offices 

 of the republic, so that treason against the state 

 and treason against him had become almost the 

 same. The old Roman watchfulness to crush out 

 attempts against Rome was now intensified by 

 being absorbed into the jealous personal suspi- 

 cion of a despot. It was no anti-climax when 

 the shrewd Jewish politicians, instead of saving, 

 "Whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh 

 against the majesty of the state," preferred to 

 Bay, "Whosoever maketh himself a king speak- 

 eth against Caesar." Long before this period of 

 the reign of Tiberius the latter had become the 

 deadlier form of the crime. Some of the ac- 

 cusers must have remembered the early days of 

 the dynasty, when Julius and Octavius perpe- 

 trated their own successful lese-majesie, and the 

 nation of the Jews, adhering to them in the great 

 convulsion, merited the name which came after- 

 ward to be known as a title of honor, of "Cae- 

 sar's friends." And all of them must have been 

 aware that while the first emperor had extended 

 the law of treason to punish libels against his 

 own person, Tiberius, still more watchful in his 

 jealousy, used the leges majestatis continually 

 against all who failed in respect to the majesty 

 of Caesar, even if they did not speak against him 

 (awriXeyeiv) in the sense of favoring counter- 

 claims by themselves or others. The great his- 

 torian records how, even before the date when 

 Pilate was sent to Judea, when the provinces ap- 

 peared before Tiberius with complaints against 

 their proconsuls, they took care to throw in along 

 with the usual accusations of rapacity the added 

 charge of treason — "Addito majestatis crimine, 

 quod turn omnium accusationum complementum 

 erat ! " ' To Pilate, as a personal dependent on 

 the favor of the emperor (a favor seemingly ori- 

 ginally procured through Sejanus, about this time 

 hurled from power), all this must have been con- ! 

 tinually and urgently present, the more as he had 

 1 Tacitus, ^Annales," iii., 39. 



already earned the hatred of his province, and 

 dreaded its revenge. His fears were not ground- 

 less. Tiberius was still upon the throne when, a 

 few years later, Pilate was superseded, and em- 

 bassadors from Palestine, relying on the heredi- 

 tary attachment of the nation to the imperial 

 house, were sent to Rome to witness against the 

 recalled and degraded governor. The shadow 

 of that distant day paralyzed Pilate on this 

 morning. What if he were to be accused before 

 Caesar of spoliation and bloodshed, and, too well 

 knowing himself to be guilty of those wrongs, 

 should read also in the eyes of his gloomy master 

 that other charge, the complement and the crown 

 of every lesser crime ? He who had so long per- 

 sisted against all other arguments now succumbed 

 at once before the well-chosen words: "If thou 

 let this man go, thou art not Caesar's friend : who- 

 soever maketh himself a king speaketh against 

 Caesar." He ascended the tribunal, from which 

 alone a final sentence could be legally pronounced 

 by a Roman judge — in the present case, apparent- 

 ly, a portable seat carried out from the praeto- 

 rium, and placed in front upon a lithostroton or 

 tesselated pavemen t. Yet even here he relieved 

 his bitter feelings by the words to the accusers, 

 " Shall I crucify your king ? " But on the chief 

 priests making the historical answer, " We have 

 no king but Caesar," the judge turned to him who 

 had claimed another kingdom, and, in such words 

 as " Ibis ad crucem," delivered him to be cruci- 

 fied. 



" Was Pilate right in crucifying Christ ? " The 

 question has recently been asked in a book of 

 extraordinary ability, which opens with the most 

 powerful attack in our language on what has been 

 known in modern times as the right of " liberty 

 of conscience." If you deny that right, argued 

 John Stuart Mill and others, you must approve 

 of Marcus Aurelius and the other persecutors of 

 Christianity — nay, you must go further, and find 

 "a principle which will justify Pontius Pilate." 

 A keen critic has accepted the challenge; and 

 his argument, while in the first instance it rather 

 departs from the question of principle so raised, 

 ultimately returns to it, and, I think, justifies the 

 selection of so memorable an illustration. The 

 discussion will be found to lead directly to the 

 only legal question which remains for me to take 

 up — the relation of the Roman state and the Ro- 

 man law to the sentence of the Roman governor : 

 1. The suggestion, however, which is first 

 made, 1 that Pilate may have " believed in good 

 1 "Was Pilate rigrht iu crucifying Christ? I reply, 



