3. Jesus lore witness to the truth. — This was the purpose of His mission. " To this end have I been born, and to this end am I come into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth." He is now before Pilate and nearing the close of His earthly life. The unity of His life, we see as we study it, is the following out to the minutest detail of the principle which He says has been and is His controlling purpose — to testify to the truth. 'In the events which are to follow, Jesus is true to the conception of His mission, even though His persistence in bearing witness to the truth leads Him to the ignominious death upon the cross. Fidelity to His mission He carried to the extent of yielding up His own life rather than cease to bear witness to the truth.
(1) He bore witness by His character. — It is nothing more than a simple truism to say that, apart from the metaphysics of His Person, which opens a wide field for speculative controversy, Jesus is the supreme revealer of God. The character of the invisible and omnipresent Deity, whom no eye can fully see, and no life can adequately express, who is without an equal in wisdom and power and goodness, is focused, as it were, in the personality of Jesus. That which overwhelms us by its mystery and vast- ness, as we look into the universe around us — of which we are a part — is brought within the range of our vision, and the reach of our love, by Jesus of Nazareth. Not only is there revelation in its loftiest compass, and in its most unveiled expression, but there is something special and unique in the form of it.
(2) He bore witness by His Ministry and Passion. — There are groups of pines on the crag-ledges of Umbria which strike the eye against the clear still sky when the autumn night is coming. Each tree alone is weird, it is gnarled and twisted, bared by the tempest, or distorted and tortured by the pitiless wind ; but the group they form together has nothing but dignity, the dignity of support and
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endurance in a lonely world. So it is essential life, together with unparalleled pain leading up to a voluntary and a dreadful death, that gives to the witness of the Passion the emphasis of extent and intensity.
^ When in the fifth century the Byzantine Empire was sinking into the decrepitude of a merely nominal Christianity, St. Chrysostom saw some converted Goths, with their clear blue eyes and yellow hair, kneeling to worship in one of the Basilicas of Constantinople, and he prophesied that that bold and hardy race should snatch the torch of truth from the more faithless and more feeble hands. They had laid down their barbarism, they had broken their idols at the feet of Him whom they called "The White Christ." Their own fierce chieftains they chose from the boldest soldiers, and lifted them upon their shields, amid shouts of warriors and clash of swords ; but they bowed before the royalty of a crucified Eedeemer. Of their race in part are we. And if we fail in our allegiance to Christ, He will never lack other soldiers and other servants ; for though the heart of men be full of evil, though for a time they may say, '* We will not have this man to reign over us," yet when the last appeal shall come to them, whether they will have Christ for a king, at last they will fall upon their knees in agonies of penitence, and in dust and ashes, with tears and with misereres, with beaten breasts, with uplifted hands, they will sigh back their answer — "Christ is King!"i
III.
Allegiance to the Truth.
1. Jesus before Pilate is the Truth making its appeal and waiting for judgment.
(1) Pilate was indifferent to the truth. — It was said of a distinguished American jurist that he finally retired from the bench because he could not there escape making decisions. Pilate was this kind of man. The French statesman, Talleyrand, writing in his old age of the qualities of a Minister of Foreign Affairs, said : " He ought to be gifted with a kind of instinct which prevents him from committing himself." Pilate was a good example of the school of Talleyrand. Here was this young 1 F, W. Fanar, True Religion, 200.
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enthusiast who had so stirred the people by the kingly declaration of His mission, " To this end was I born, that I should bear witness unto the truth " ; and Pilate, the consistent neutral, looked down on Him with serious pity and answered, " Ah, my young friend, what is this illusion for which you want to die ? Die for it, then, if you will ! I find no fault in you ; I wash my hands of blame. You bring your fate upon yourself." And so dismissing this case of an alien, he retired into his palace, well content with himself because he had been neither ensnared by the enthusiasm of the reformer nor misled by the bigotry of the mob.
(2) Pilate turned away from the truth. — The Prisoner before him had accepted the title of a king. He based His claim to this title on the fact that He had come to bear witness to the truth. He declared that those who were themselves of the truth would acknowledge His claim ; they were His rightful subjects ; they were the enfranchised citizens of His Kingdom. Strange language this in the ears of a cynical, worldly sceptic, to whose eyes the most attractive type of humanity was a judicious admixture of force and fraud. " Pilate saith unto him, What is truth ? And when he had said this, he went out." The alterca- tion could be carried no further. Was not human life itself one great query, without an answer? What was truth, what else, except that which each man thought? Truth! This helpless Prisoner claimed to be a king, and He appealed, forsooth, to His truthfulness as the credential of His sovereign rights. Was ever any claim more contradictory of all human experience, more palpably absurd than this ? Truth ! When had truth anything to do with founding a kingdom ? The mighty engine of imperial power, the iron sceptre which ruled the world, whence came it ? Certainly it owed nothing to truth. Had not Augustus established his sovereignty by an unscrupulous employment of force, and maintained it by an astute use of artifice ? And his successor, the present occupant of the imperial throne, was he not an arch dissembler, the darkest of all dark enigmas ? The name of Tiberius was a by-word for impenetrable disguise. Truth might do well enough for fools and enthusiasts, for simple men; but for rulers, for diplomatists, for men of the world, it was the wildest of all wild dreams. Truth! What was truth? He had lived too long in the world to trust any such hollow pretensions.