ese savage Jews. For scourging was a savage
punishment. The whip was loaded with lead and sharp fish-bones, and at
every stroke the flesh was cut. Men often died under this severe
treatment. Pilate had it inflicted on Jesus, knowing Him to be
innocent; but hoping that, if He survived, no more might be required.
It was an abominable compromise. If Jesus were innocent--and Pilate
knew He was innocent--He should have been set free unscathed, with
apologies for a mistaken arrest. If he were guilty, of course he ought
to receive the death-penalty for the crime of treason. Justice could
allow of no middle course. But Pilate is not thinking of Justice. He
only wants to escape the onus of killing an innocent man. Then he has
Jesus brought forth, bleeding, in agony, His lacerated flesh exposed to
the view of that heartless multitude. "_Behold the man_," says Pilate.
"Look at your victim; is not this enough?" If Pilate thought his
appeal _ad misericordiam_ would touch those hardened sinners of the
Sanhedrin, he was strangely mistaken. The sight of their victim in His
agony only maddens them. They are like hounds who had tasted blood.
Like hounds, they "give tongue," and yell for His death. Pilate can
resist no longer. He has played his last card, and it has been taken.
Thoroughly humiliated and quite helpless, he gives sentence, and so in
spite of the governor's desperate efforts to escape the stigma of his
awful crime, it goes down to all the ages that Jesus was "crucified
under Pontius Pilate."

BARABBAS

BY REV. J. G. GREENHOUGH, M.A.

"And they cried out all at once, saying, Away with this man, and
release unto us Barabbas."--ST LUKE xxiii. 18.

You have heard a crowd of people cry out all at once. It is always
impressive, it is sometimes very terrible, occasionally it is sublime.
It begins in a way that no one can explain. Somebody in the crowd
utters a name, or ejaculates a brief sentence. What happens? Often
nothing at all. Men are not in the mood for it; it drops unnoticed, or
provokes a jeer or two and is then forgotten. But sometimes the word
falls like a spark on a mass of dry tinder--ten thousand hearts have
been prepared for it--swift as a flash of lightning a sympathetic
current passes through the whole throng--ten thousand lips take up the
cry. They are all carried away by contagion, magnetism, or madness,
and a shout goes up enough to rend the sky. When some great and noble