erious inquiry. Pilate flung off
the very idea of truth--a mere abstraction, nothing to a practical
Roman. Still, though he was not seeking any answer to his question, by
the very tone of it he suggested that he did not possess that gem which
those who hold it prize above all things. "The Scepticism of Pilate"
is the title of one of Robertson's greatest sermons. The preacher
traces it to four sources: indecision; falseness to his own
convictions; the taint of the worldly temper of his day; and that
priestly bigotry which forbids inquiry, and makes doubt a crime.
Pilate is the typical sceptic, who is worlds removed from the "honest"
doubter. Serious doubt, which is pained and anxious in the search of
truth, is in essence belief, for it believes in the value of truth, if
only truth can be discovered; but typical scepticism not only does not
credit what the believer takes for truth, but despises it as not worth
seeking. That is the fatal doubt, a doubt that eats into the soul as a
moral canker.

Nevertheless, although what is of supreme value to Jesus is reckoned by
Pilate as of no importance whatever, the cross-examination has
satisfied the magistrate of the innocence of his Prisoner. His duty,
then, is plain. He should acquit the innocent man. But he dare not do
so immediately. That howling mob of Jews and those odious priests and
Sadducees of the council are determined on the death of their victim.
Pilate has made himself well hated by the roughness of his government.
Nothing would please the Jews and their leaders better than to have
some chance of impeaching him before his jealous master at Rome, on the
charge of leniency to treason. Pilate quails before the terrible
possibility. In face of it he simply dares not pronounce a verdict of
acquittal. Yet he means to do all he can to effect the escape of his
Prisoner. His inbred instinct for justice prompts him to this; for the
Romans cherished reverence for law, and even so corrupt a ruler as
Pilate was not independent of the atmosphere of his race. Then it
would be a bitter humiliation to let his judgment be overruled by those
contemptible Jews. He would be heartily glad to confound and
disappoint them. More than this, he had begun to feel some awakening
interest in his remarkable Prisoner. He had come to the conclusion
that Jesus was a harmless dreamer; but he had felt some faint shadow of
the spell of the wonderful Personality. If only it could be ma