ant's stronghold, and in part a fairy
pleasure-house."

[3] Acts xviii. 14-16.

[4] _ethnos_, not _laos_: they were speaking to a heathen.

[5] Keim calls it "a very flagrant lie."

[6] "Socrates, quum omnium sapientissime sanctissimeque vixisset, ita
in judicio capitis pro se dixit, ut non supplex aut reus, sed magister
aut dominus videretur judicum."--CICERO.

CHAPTER V.

JESUS AND HEROD

Pilate had tried Jesus and found Him innocent; and so he frankly told
the members of the Sanhedrim, thereby reversing their sentence. What
ought to have followed? Of course Jesus ought to have been released
and, if necessary, protected from the feeling of the Jews.

Why was this not what happened? An incident in the life of Pilate,
narrated by a secular historian, may best explain. Some years before
the trial of Jesus, Pilate, newly settled in the position of governor
of Judaea, resolved to remove the headquarters of the Roman army from
Caesarea to Jerusalem; and the soldiers entered the Holy City with
their standards, each of which bore the image of the emperor. To the
Jewish mind these images were idolatrous, and their presence in
Jerusalem was looked upon as a gross insult and desecration. The
foremost men of the city poured down to Caesarea, where Pilate was
staying, and besought him to remove them. He refused, and for five
days the discussion went on. At length he was so irritated that he
ordered them to be surrounded by soldiers, and threatened to have them
put to death unless they became silent and dispersed. They, however,
in no way dismayed, threw themselves on the ground and laid bare their
necks, crying that they would rather die than have their city defiled.
And the upshot was that Pilate had to yield, and the army was withdrawn
from Jerusalem.[1]

Such was the governor, and such were the people with whom he had to
deal. He was no match for them, when their hearts were set on anything
and their religious prejudices roused. In the present case they did
with him exactly as they had done on that early occasion. He declared
Jesus innocent, and thereupon the trial ought to have been at an end.
But they raised an angry clamour--"they were the more fierce," says St.
Luke--and began to pour out new accusations against the Prisoner.

Pilate had not nerve enough to resist. He weakly turned to Jesus
Himself, asking, "Hearest Thou not what these witness against Thee?"
But Jesus "answered to him never a