The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ | Page 5

with the mind and spirit of
Christ.
IV.
Perhaps it was by the recollection of how deeply he had vowed to stick
by Christ, even if he should have to die with Him, that Peter was
pricked on to do something. The others, however, had said the same
thing. Did they remember it now? It is to be feared, not: the apparition
of mortal danger drove everything out of their minds but the instinct of
self-preservation. Sometimes, in cases of severe illness, especially of
mental disease, the curious effect may be observed--that a face into
which years of culture have slowly wrought the stamp of refinement
and dignity entirely loses this, and reverts to the original peasant type.
So the fright of their Master's arrest, coming so suddenly on the
prayerless and unprepared disciples, undid, for the time, what their

years of intercourse with Him had effected; and they sank back into
Galilean fishermen again. This was really what they were from the
arrest to the resurrection.
Here again their conduct is in absolute contrast with their Master's. As
a mother-bird, when her brood is assailed, goes forward to meet the
enemy, or as a good shepherd stands forth between his flock and danger,
so Jesus, when His captors drew nigh, threw Himself between them and
His followers. It was partly with this in view that He went so boldly out
and concentrated attention on Himself by the challenge, "Whom seek
ye?" When they replied, "Jesus of Nazareth," He said, "I am He: if
therefore ye seek Me, let these go their way." And the fright into which
they were thrown made them forget His followers in their anxiety to
secure Himself.
This was as He intended. St. John, in narrating it, makes the curious
remark, that this was done that the saying might be fulfilled which He
spake, "Of them which Thou gavest Me have I lost none." This saying
occurs in His great intercessory prayer, offered at the first Communion
table; but in its original place it evidently means that He had lost none
of them in a spiritual sense, whereas here it seems to have only the
sense of losing any of them by the swords of the soldiers or by the
cross, if they had been arrested with Him. But a deep hint underlies this
surface meaning. St. John suggests that, if any of them had been taken
along with Him, the likelihood is that they would have been unequal to
the crisis: they would have denied Him, and so, in the sadder sense,
would have been lost.
Jesus, knowing too well that this was the state of the case, made for
them a way of escape, and "they all forsook Him and fled." It was
perhaps as well, for they might have done worse. Yet what an
anticlimax to the asseveration which everyone of them had made that
very evening, "If I should die with Thee, I will not deny Thee in any
wise!" I have sometimes thought what an honour it would have been to
Christianity, what a golden leaf in the history of human nature, had one
or two of them--say, the brothers James and John--been strong enough
to go with Him to prison and to death. We should, indeed, have missed

St. John's writings in that case--his Revelation, Gospel and Epistles.
But what a revelation that would have been, what a gospel, what a
living epistle!
It was not, however, to be. Jesus had to go unaccompanied: "I have
trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with
Me." So they "bound Him and led Him away."

[1] Speira=cohors, tenth part of legion. See Ramsay, R.A., 381.
[2] katephilesen. It is used of the woman who was a sinner, when she
kissed the feet of the Saviour.
[3] Psalm lv. 13-14.
[4] Other instances in Süskind, Passionsschule, in loc.
[5] See fuller details in Imago Christi, last chapter.
CHAPTER II.
THE ECCLESIASTICAL TRIAL
Over the Kedron, up the slope to the city, through the gates, along the
silent streets, the procession passed, with Jesus in the midst; midnight
stragglers, perhaps, hurrying forward from point to point to ask what
was ado, and peering towards the Prisoner's face, before they diverged
again towards their own homes.[1] He was conducted to the residence
of the high priest, where His trial ensued.
Jesus had to undergo two trials--the one ecclesiastical, the other civil;
the one before Caiaphas the high priest, the other before Pontius Pilate
the governor.
The reason of this was, that Judaea was at that time under Roman rule,
forming a portion of the Roman province of Syria and administered by
a Roman official, who resided in the splendid new seaport of Caesarea,

fifty miles away from Jerusalem, but had also a