The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ | Page 7

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 were annihilating one another; nor did He now answer a word in response to the high priest's interruption. He did not need to speak: silence spoke better than the loudest words could have done. It brought home to His judges the ridiculousness and the shamefulness of their position. Even their hardened consciences began to be uneasy, as that calm Face looked down on them and their procedure with silent dignity. It was by the uneasiness which he was feeling that the high priest was made so loud and shrill.
In short, he had been beaten along this second line quite as completely as he had been along the first. But he had still a last card, and now he played it. Returning to his throne and confronting Jesus with theatrical solemnity,