f the law and the service
of God and the promises!" It was the renouncement of their birthright,
the abandonment of their destiny. Pilate well knew what it had cost
their proud hearts thus to forswear the hopes of their fathers and
acknowledge the right of their conqueror; but to compel them to swallow
this bitter draught was some compensation for the cup of humiliation
they had compelled him to drink. And he took them at their word.

[1] Perhaps also of admiration. Pilate had never before seen so
impressive a specimen of humanity; and the contrast between the
sweetness and majesty of His appearance and the indignities which He
had suffered drew from him this involuntary exclamation. One recalls
Shakespeare's words about Brutus:

"His life was gentle, and the elements
So mixed in him, that nature might stand up
And say to all the world, This was a Man!"

[2] We are much tempted on account of the "therefore" to explain "from
above" as referring to the Jewish tribunal.

[3] Philo.

[4] It is a striking illustration of the irony of history that Pilate
was overtaken by the very fate to escape which he abandoned Jesus.
Soon after the Crucifixion his subjects lodged a complaint against him
at Rome. He was recalled from his province and never returned.
Ultimately, it is said, he terminated his existence with his own hand,
"wearied out with miseries." Many legends in subsequent centuries
clustered about his name. Several spots were supposed to be haunted by
his restless and despairing spirit, notably a spring in Switzerland on
the top of Mount Pilatus, which was thought to have derived its name
from him; but this is more than doubtful.

CHAPTER IX.

JUDAS ISCARIOT

To the civil trial of our Lord there is a sad appendix, as we have
already had one to the ecclesiastical trial. Christ's great confession
in the palace of the high priest was accompanied by the great denial of
Peter outside; and the proceedings in the court of Pontius Pilate were
accompanied by the final act of the treachery of Judas. Only in the
latter case we are not able with the same accuracy to fix the
circumstances of time and place.

I.

Judas is one of the darkest riddles of human history. In the Vision of
Hell the poet Dante, after traversing the circles of the universe of
woe, in which each separate kind of wickedness receives its peculiar
punishment, arrives at last, in the company of his guide, at the
nethermost