The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ | Page 9

were first submitted to them that they went astray. He,

being such as He was, could only have been welcomed and appreciated
by expectant, receptive, holy minds. The ecclesiastical authorities of
Judaea in that age were anything but expectant, receptive and holy.
They were totally incapable of understanding Him, and saw no beauty
that they should desire Him. As He often told them Himself, being such
as they were, they could not believe. The fault lay not so much in what
they did as in what they were. Being in the wrong path, they went
forward to the end. It may be said that they walked according to their
light; but the light that was in them was darkness. Their proceedings,
however, on this occasion will not tend to soften the heart of anyone
who looks into them carefully. They had hardly the least show of
justice. There was no regular charge or regular evidence, and no
thought whatever of allowing the Accused to bring counter-evidence;
the same persons were both accusers and judges; the sentence was a
foregone conclusion; and the entire proceedings consisted of a series of
devices to force the Accused into some statement which would supply
a colourable pretext for condemning Him.[7]
But it was by what ensued after the sentence of condemnation was
passed that these men cut themselves off forever from the sympathy of
the tolerant and generous. A court of law ought to be a place of dignity;
when a great issue is tried and a solemn judgment passed, it ought to
impress the judges themselves; even the condemned, when a death
sentence has been passed, ought to be hedged round with a certain awe
and respect. But that blow inflicted with impunity at the
commencement of the trial by a minion of the court was too clear an
index of the state of mind of all present. There was no solemnity or
greatness of any kind in their thoughts; nothing but resentment and
spite at Him who had thwarted and defied them, lessened them in the
public estimation and stopped their unholy gains. A perfect sea of such
feelings had long been gathering in their hearts; and now, when the
opportunity came, it broke loose upon Him. They struck Him with their
sticks; they spat in His face; they drew something over His head and,
smiting Him again, cried, "Christ, prophesy who smote Thee." [8] One
would wish to believe that it was only by the miserable underlings that
such things were done; but the narrative makes it too clear that the
masters led the way and the servants followed.

There are terrible things in man. There are some depths in human
nature into which it is scarcely safe to look. It was by the very
perfection of Christ that the uttermost evil of His enemies was brought
out. There is a passage in "Paradise Lost," where a band of angels, sent
out to scour Paradise in search of Satan, who is hidden in the garden,
discover him in the shape of a toad "squat at the ear of Eve." Ithuriel,
one of the band, touches him with his spear, whereat, surprised, he
starts up in his own shape,--
"for no falsehood can endure Touch of celestial temper, but returns Of
force to its own likeness."
But the touch of perfect goodness has often the opposite effect: it
transforms the angel into the toad, which is evil's own likeness.
Christ was now getting into close grips with the enemy He had come to
this world to overcome; and, as it clutched Him for the final wrestle, it
exhibited all its ugliness and discharged all its venom.[9] The claw of
the dragon was in His flesh, and its foul breath in His mouth. We
cannot conceive what such insult and dishonour must have been to His
sensitive and regal mind. But He rallied His heart to endure and not to
faint; for He had come to be the death of sin, and its death was to be the
salvation of the world.

[1] Here would come in the curious little notice in St. Mark: "And there
followed Him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his
naked body; and the young men laid hold on him; and he left the linen
cloth and fled from them naked"; on which I have not commented, not
well knowing, in truth, what to make of it. It may be designed to show
the rudeness of the soldiery, and the peril in which any follower of
Jesus would have been had he been caught. Some have supposed that
the young man was St. Mark, and that this is the painter's signature in
an obscure corner of his picture. (See Holzmann in Handcommentar
zum Neuen Testament.)