The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ | Page 7

the trial; but it was merely a brief rehearsal,
for form's sake, of what had been already done.[4] Therefore, we must
return to the proceedings during the night, which contain the kernel of
the matter.
Imagine, then, a large room forming one side of the court of an Oriental
house, from which it is separated only by a row of pillars, so that what
is going on in the lighted interior is visible to those outside. The room
is semicircular. Round the arc of the semicircle the half-hundred or
more[5] members sit on a divan. Caiaphas, the president, occupies a
kind of throne in the centre of the opposite wall. In front stands the
Accused, facing him, with the jailers on the one side and the witnesses
on the other.
How ought any trial to commence? Surely with a clear statement of the
crime alleged and with the production of witnesses to support the
charge. But, instead of beginning in this way, "the high priest asked
Jesus of His disciples and of His doctrine."
The insinuation was that He was multiplying disciples for some secret
design and teaching them a secret doctrine, which might be construed
into a project of revolution. Jesus, still throbbing with the indignity of
being arrested under cloud of night, as if He were anxious to escape,
and by a force so large as to suggest that He was the head of a
revolutionary band, replied, with lofty self-consciousness, "Why askest
thou Me? Ask them that heard Me what I have said unto them; behold,
they know what I said." Why had they arrested Him if they had yet to
learn what He had said and done? They were trying to make Him out to
be an underground schemer; but they, with their arrests in secrecy and
their midnight trials, were themselves the sons of darkness.
Such simple and courageous speech was alien to that place, which
knew only the whining of suppliants, the smooth flatteries of
sycophants, and the diplomatic phrases of advocates; and a jailer,
perhaps seeing the indignant blush mount into the face of the high

priest, clenched his fist and struck Jesus on the mouth, asking,
"Answerest Thou the high priest so?" Poor hireling! better for him that
his hand had withered ere it struck that blow. Almost the same thing
once happened to St. Paul in the same place, and he could not help
hurling back a stinging epithet of contempt and indignation. Jesus was
betrayed into no such loss of temper. But what shall be said of a
tribunal, and an ecclesiastical tribunal, which could allow an untried
Prisoner to be thus abused in open court by one of its minions?
The high priest had, however, been stopped on the tack which he had
first tried, and was compelled to do what he ought to have begun
with--to call witnesses. But this, too, turned out a pitiful failure. They
had not had time to get a charge properly made out and witnesses cited;
and there was no time to wait. Evidence had to be extemporized; and it
was swept up apparently from the underlings and hangers on of the
court. It is expressly said by St. Matthew that "they sought false witness
against Jesus to put Him to death." To put Him to death was what in
their hearts they were resolved upon,--they were only trying to trump
up a legal pretext, and they were not scrupulous. The attempt was,
however, far from successful. The witnesses could not be got to agree
together or to tell a consistent story. Many were tried, but the fiasco
grew more and more ridiculous.
At length two were got to agree about something they had heard from
Him, out of which, it was hoped, a charge could be constructed. They
had heard Him say, "I will destroy this temple that is made with hands,
and within three days I will build another made without hands." It was
a sentence of His early ministry, obviously of high poetic meaning,
which they were reproducing as the vulgarest prose; although, even
thus interpreted, it is difficult to see what they could have made of it;
because, if the first half of it meant that He was to destroy the temple,
the second promised to restore it again. The high priest saw too well
that they were making nothing of it; and, starting up and springing
forward, he demanded of Jesus, "Answerest Thou nothing? What is it
which these witness against Thee?" He affected to believe that it was
something of enormity that had been alleged; but it was really because
he knew that nothing could be founded on it that he gave way to such

unseemly excitement.
Jesus had looked on in absolute silence while the witnesses against
Him