A Roman Lawyer in Jerusalem | Page 6

tore up life even to
its roots! Say what you will--grant all the guilt--and still What pangs of
dread remorse--what agonies Of desperate repentance, all too late, In
that wild interval between the crime And its last sad atonement!--life,
the while, Laden with horror all too great to bear, And pressing madly
on to death's abyss; This was no common mind that thus could feel--
No vulgar villain sinning for reward!
Was he a villain lost to sense of shame? Ay, so say John and Peter and
the rest; And yet--and yet this tale that Lysias tells Weighs with me

more the more I ponder it; For thus I put it: Either Judas was, As John
affirms, a villain and a thief, A creature lost to shame and base at
heart-- Or else, which is the view that Lysias takes, He was a rash and
visionary man Whose faith was firm, who had no thought of crime, But
whom a terrible mistake drove mad. Take but John's view, and all to
me is blind. Call him a villain who, with greed of gain, For thirty silver
pieces sold his Lord. Does not the bribe seem all too small and mean?
He held the common purse, and, were he thief, Had daily power to steal,
and lay aside A secret and accumulating fund; So doing, he had nothing
risked of fame, While here he braved the scorn of all the world. Besides,
why chose they for their almoner A man so lost to shame, so foul with
greed? Or why, from some five-score of trusted men, Choose him as
one apostle among twelve? Or why, if he were known to be so vile,
(And who can hide his baseness at all times?) Keep him in close
communion to the last? Naught in his previous life, or acts, or words,
Shows this consummate villain that, full-grown, Leaps all at once to
such a height of crime.
Again, how comes it that this wretch, whose heart Is eased to shame,
flings back the paltry bribe? And, when he knows his master is
condemned, Rushes in horror out to seek his death? Whose fingers
pointed at him in the crowd? Did all men flee his presence till he found
Life too intolerable? Nay; not so! Death came too close upon the heels
of crime, He had but done what all his tribe deemed just: All the great
mass--I mean the upper class-- The Rabbis, all the Pharisees and Priests
Ay, and the lower mob as well who cried, "Give us Barabbas! Christus
to the cross!" These men were all of them on Judas's side, And Judas
had done naught against the law. Were he this villain, he had but to say,
"I followed Christus till I found at last He aimed at power to overthrow
the State. I did the duty of an honest man. I traitor! you are traitors who
reprove." Besides, such villains scorn the world's reproof.
Or he might say--"You call this act a crime? What crime was it to say I
know this man? I said no ill of him. If crime there be, 'Twas yours who
doomed him unto death, not mine." A villain was he? So Barabbas was!
But did Barabbas go and hang himself, Weary of life--the murderer and
thief? This coarse and vulgar way will never do. Grant him a villain, all

his, acts must be Acts of a villain; if you once admit Remorse so bitter
that it leads to death, And death so instant on the heels of crime, You
grant a spirit sensitive to shame, So sensitive that life can yield no joys
To counterbalance one bad act;--but then A nature such as this, though
led astray, When greatly tempted, is no thorough wretch. Was the
temptation great? could such a bribe Tempt such a nature to a crime
like this? I say, to me it simply seems absurd. Peter at least was not so
sensitive. He cursed and swore, denying that he knew Who the man
Christus was; but after all He only wept--he never hanged himself.
But take the other view that Lysias takes, All is at once consistent, clear,
complete. Firm in the faith that Christus was his God The great
Messiah sent to save the world, He, seeking for a sign--not for himself,
But to show proof to all that he was God Conceived this plan, rash if
you will, but grand. "Thinking him man," he said, "mere mortal man,
They seek to seize him--I will make pretence To take the public bribe
and point him out, And they shall go, all armed with swords and staves,
Strong with the power of law, to seize on him-- And at their touch he,
God himself, shall stand Revealed before them, and their