his pretensions, or, as some think, a bright or white robe, as though in mimicry of his tandidature for royal honours. Thus sent back to Pilate, he is scourged by the pro- curator’s command. The very thought of that scourging makes the blood run cold and the heart sick. All that preceded, cruel as it was and devilish as it was, caused but little of bodily pain as compared with the scourging. He had indeed suffered dreadfully, in both body and mind. He had been betrayed by one disciple, denied by another; three slept when they should have sympathized ; at length all forsook him and fled. He has been hurried from one tribunal to another—from the Sauhedrim te the Roman governor, from the Roman governor to the Tetrarch of Galilee, and from Herod back to Pilate. See him the night preceding in the Garden of Gethsemane, in the midst of his agony, when perspiration bathed his body, and that bloody sweat trickled in big drops down to the ground. See him now in the place where he is scourged, cruelly scourged, his face marred, his body mangled, the quivering flesh fearfully torn with the bits of lead and bone plaited into the leathern thongs, while he is still barbarously smitten, and savage stripes inflicted on him, See him again, surrounded by a band of ruffian soldiers—provincial or rather Roman soldiers, to their disgrace be it recorded—who plait a crown of ndbk thorns, and press it down so that the sharp and prickly points more painfully pierce his temples and lacerate his bleeding brows. While his body is still smarting from the wounds made by the scourging, while the blood is still running down on every side from the thorn- crown, while insult is being heaped on insult and added to injury, they smite his sacred head with a reed as if to gash that head more brutally, and leave the thorns yet deeper in the skin, One other act in that bloody tragedy precedes and prepares for the crucifixion itself. Instead of the gorgeous or white robe with which Herod ana his men of war had, in their bitter mockery, clothed him, the Roman soldiers of the governor arrayed him with the military scarlet or purple war-cloak, mimicking the imperial purple. He is stripped a second time—the mock-garments are pulled off him, and his own put on; and thus all his wounds are opened afresh and their pain renewed. During the mock-coronation, in which the leaves of thorn burlesqued the imperial wreath of laurel, the reed the royal sceptre, and the soldier’s cloak the emperor’s purple, they spat upon him, they smote him on the head, they bowed the knee in mockery, and they scoffed him, saying, “ Hail, King of the Jews!” 4. /ilate’s last effort to release him. Once more Pilate makes another eflort to prevent the crucifixion of Christ. Though scourging was usually the frightful preparation for crucifixion, yet Pilate is most anxious to proceed no further. He seeks to have it regarded, perhaps, in the light of trial by torture without anything worthy of death being elicited, or perhaps he wishes to have it accepted as a sufficient substitute for crucifixion. With some such purpose—a purpose, as it is generally and properly understood, of commiseration—he exhibits the Saviour in that unspeakably sad and sorrowful plight—worn, wan, and wasted; his features here befouled with spitting, there besmeared with blood ; his face disfigured by blows—marred more than any man’s and his countenance more than the sons of men; while blood-drops trickle from many a wound down on the tesselated pavement. He calls their attention to this woe- begone and most pitiable spectacle, saying, in words that have thrilled many a heart, and shall thrill thousands in the generations that may be yet to come, “ Behold the Man!” But im vain. The only response was a louder, sterner, fiercer cry: ‘‘ Crucify ‘im! crucify him!” He deserves to die, “ because he made hiuiself the Son of God.” Moved to the inmost depths of his being, Pilate struggles on tur his release; but, amid the loud clamour for the Victim’s blood, there are ominous grow]s that boded a possible impeachment on the charge of treason against the governor himself. “ If thou let this man go, thou art not Casar’s friend;” “ We have no king but Cesar.” Shame upon those bloodthirsty hypocrites who could say so; though they hated Cesar and all his belongings, and were real rebels at heart! And shame upon that cowardly judge, who, as a Roman magistrate, quailed before such cruel clamour, and had rot the courage of his own certain convictions! 5. Agencies co-operating to compass the crucifixion. If we glance for a moment at the various influences that were at work to ccm) ass our Lord’s death upon the cross, we find in the foreground the envy and uialice of chief priests and rulers; the mean-spirited avarice of the wretched traitor Judas ; the want of firmness and thorough conscientiousness on the part of Pilate; the fury of a fickle
336 ‘““HE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MARK. [cu. xv. 1—47.
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mob misled by designing demagogues; the submission of the soldiers to the orders of their superiors ;—all obeying the propensities of their own nature, though ignorant of the reason or the results; all fulfilling the predictions of Scripture, though not know- ing it; and all accomplishing the purposes of God, though not intending it. But in the background, as we shall see in connection with the crucifixion itself, it was sin on the part of man, and substitution on the part of the Saviour. “He bore our sins,” says the apostle, “in his own body on the tree.” It was determinate counsel and foreknowledge on the partof God. In accordance with that counsel and foreknowledge, and in consequence of our sin and the Saviour’s substitutionary self-sacrifice, “ought not Christ to suffer these things?” Was it not necessary for him to become “obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” ?—J. J. G.