affecting remonstrance was all in vain; they cried out the more, saying, "Let him be crucified." When therefore Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, "I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it." This was a custom both among the Jews and the Romans, when they wished to exculpate themselves from the guilt of having put to death an innocent man. We meet with instances of this significant ablution in several classic writers*. The Mosaic law itself enjoined it in certain cases †; and it is in allusion to this ceremony that David says in the Psalms, "I will wash my hands in innocency, O Lord; (that is,

in

*Sophocles-Ajax, iii. i. v. 664; & Scholias in loco. So Æneas, after having recently slaughtered so many of his enemies at the sacking of Troy by the Greeks, durst not touch his household gods, till he had washed himself in the running stream.

Me, bello è tanto digressum et cæde recenti,

Attractare nefas ; donec me flumine vivo

in testimony of my innocence) and so will

I

go

to thine altar *”

This therefore was at once a visible declaration of the innocence of Jesus, and of Pilate's reluctance in condemning him. To this the Jews made that answer, which must petrify every heart with horror. "Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us and on our children. Then released he Barabbas unto them: and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified."

Here let us pause a moment, and look back to the scene we have been contemplating, and the reflections that arise from it.

It affords, in the first place, a most awful warning to the lower orders of the people, to beware of giving themselves up, as they too frequently do, to the direction of artful and profligate leaders, who abuse their simplicity and credulity to the very worst purposes, and make use of them only as tools, to accomplish their own private

views

*Psalm xxyi, 6.

views of ambition, of avarice, of resentment, or revenge. We have just seen a most striking instance of this strange propensity of the multitude to be misled, and of the ease with which their passions are worked up to the commission of the most atrocious crimes. The Jewish people were naturally attached to Jesus. They were astonished at his miracles, they were charmed with his discourses; and their diseases and infirmities were relieved by his omnipotent benevolence. But notwithstanding all this, by the dexterous management of their chief priests and elders, their admiration of Jesus was converted in a moment into the most rancorous hatred; they were persuaded to ask the life of a murderer in preference to his; and to demand the destruction of a man who had never offended them, whose innocence was as clear as the day, and was repeatedly acknowledged and strongly urged upon them by the very judge who had tried him.

Yet even that judge himself, who was

SQ

so thoroughly convinced of the innocence of his prisoner, and actually used every means in his power to preserve him, even he had not the honesty and the courage to protect him effectually; and his conduct affords a most dreadful proof what kind of a thing public justice was among the most enlightened, and (if we may believe their own poets and historians) the most virtuous people in the ancient heathen world. We see a Roman governor sent to dispense justice in a Roman province, and invested with full powers to save or to destroy; we see him with a prisoner before him, in whom he repeatedly declared he could find no fault; and yet, after a few ineffectual struggles with his own conscience, he delivers up that prisoner, not merely to death, but to the most horrible and excruciating torments that human malignity could devise. The fact is, he was afraid of the people, he was afraid of Cæsar; and when the clamorous multitude cried out to him, "If thou let this man go, thou art not Cæsar's

friend,"

friend," all his firmness, all his resolution at once forsook him. He shrunk from the dangers that threatened him, and sacrificed his conscience and his duty to the menaces of a mob, and the dread of sovereign power.

Could any thing like this have happened in this country? We all know that it is impossible. We all know that no dangers, no threats, no fears, either of Cæsar or of the people, could ever induce a British judge to condemn to death a man, whom he in his conscience believed to be innocent. And what is it that produces this difference between a Roman and a British judge? It is this: that the former had no other principle to govern his conduct but natural reason, or what would now be called philosophy; which, though it would sometimes point out to him the path of duty, yet could never inspire him with fortitude enough to persevere in it in critical and dangerous circumstances; in opposition to the frowns of a tyrant, or the clamours of a multitude. Whereas

the