Matt. xxvi, 62, 63. "And the high priest arose, and said unto him, Answerest thou nothing? what is it which these witness against thee? But Jesus held his peace."

66

Yet when solemnly adjured by the high priest to answer whether he did or did not lay claim to the divine character of the Messiah, he does not hesitate to make that profession which he could not but know was equivalent to his condemnation. Mark xiv, 61, sqq. Again the high priest asked him, and said unto him, Art thou the Christ, the son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven. Then the high priest rent his clothes, and saith, What need we any further witnesses? Ye have heard the blasphemy."

d

He is led, in consequence, before the Roman governor, with a new accusation, that of pro

:

a charge of magic: the crime imputed by the Jews of almost every age to our Lord, and the reason they set up for their rejection of Him.

d St. Matthew and St. Luke, in the corresponding places, give precisely the same question and reply; but the reply, being couched in a different idiom, is less clear; being translated literally to the words but not to the sense.

3

St. John does not give either: according to his usual practice when any thing had been amply recorded by the other Evangelists.

moting revolt from the Romans, and assuming kingly authority: and here it is very observ

e St. John xviii, 28, sqq. "Then led they Jesus from Caiaphas unto the hall of judgement: and it was early; and they themselves went not into the judgement-hall, lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the Passover, Pilate then went out unto them, and said, What accusation bring ye against this man? They answered and said unto him, If he were not a malefactor we would not have delivered him up unto thee. Then said Pilate unto them, Take ye him, and judge him according to your law. The Jews therefore said unto him, It is not lawful for us to put any man to death: that the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled, which he spake, signifying what death he should die." (Namely by crucifixion, which he could not have suffered, but stoning, if he had been condemned to death by the Jews.)

Pilate evidently did not apprehend that they expected so heavy a punishment as death, but probably at first considered the accusation as merely a question of their law.' They, on their part, appear to have advanced the charge of treason to the empire, as the only crime that would weigh with a Roman governor. St. Luke is the only one of the Evangelists who distinctly says that this charge was preferred against Him, but it is abundantly apparent from all the other three, by inference, that it was so: for, in all, Pilate demands whether he was the king of the Jews;' evidently in consequence of what had been told him by the High

able that he does not by justifying himself, or explaining his character and pretensions (further than justice to their real nature demanded 1), attempt to influence the mind of Pilate, who was favourable to him. Nay, when Pilate again preremptorily demands whether he did or did not pretend to the character of a king (the only accusation about which he concerned himself), Jesus distinctly admits what could not but be followed by his condemnation.

John xviii, 37. "Pilate therefore said unto him" (the second time), "Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, thou sayest that I am a king:" i. e. "thou sayest truly that I am a king.'

(Matt. xxvii, 11; Mark xv, 2; Luke xxiii, 3.) When sent by Pilate's orders to the tribunal of Herod, (to whose jurisdiction he considered him to belong), though questioned by the king in

Priest and his party. See Matt. xxvii, 11; Mark xv, 2; John xviii, 33.

f "Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence."

8 That Pilate was inclined not to put our Lord to death, appears as well from the accounts of the Evangelists, as from the testimony of Peter, Acts iii, 13, "Whom ye delivered up, and denied him in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let him go.”

person, he makes no answer at all Luke xxiii, 9).

The result is known to all: the sacred person whose course we have thus imperfectly traced, as far as it bore upon the great object of his unexampled life—his death; endured that painful death which he so long—so constantly—and so distinctly had predicted; at the time and place to which his words pointed; all his actions even at that terrible moment (the particulars of which are, I trust, so well known to all that I need not cite them here), having a significancy the most remarkable, and in the most perfect conformity with the end and the

h Our Lord probably refrained from making any answer before Herod, for the same reasons which appear to have withheld him before Pilate: and possibly also because Herod's desire to see him may have been nothing more than an unprofitable curiosity. Luke xxiii, 8; ix, 9.

To recur to a topic I have had occasion to touch upon before The Jews in their answer to Pilate (John xviii, 30), say "If he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up to thee." i. e. We have already found him guilty of death, and we should not have delivered him to your cognizance but as a condemned malefactor." In consequence of the inability of the Jews to visit with the penalty of death, by their own sentence, our Lord became liable to the punishment of crucifixion.

conduct of his life, such as we conceive them to have been his last words being those memorable

ones:

"IT IS FULFILLED."

It is known also to all who have given their close attention to this great subject, in how many particulars of time and otherwise, this divine death coincided with the offering of that Paschal sacrifice of Atonement, which Christians believe to have prefigured his.

And here I must close this analysis: my business has been to consider the words and actions of Jesus Christ alone, so far as they bore upon my subject; and of these principally such as were not of themselves miraculous: and on this account I must refrain from examining his most remarkable conversation with his disciples on the road to Emmaus; during which, as on other occasions, he is recorded to have drawn their tardy and reluctant attention to the prophecies of their Scriptures which represented it as necessary,

'THAT CHRIST SHOULD suffer.'

These particulars, as being founded in the miraculous, and therefore, (it may be thought), more in the situation to require proof than to afford it; as well as a great variety of circumstances corroborative of what has been advanced, but inadmissible because not the actions or the words of