Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. iii. 1, init.]

[Footnote 2: Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. ii.-iv.]

[Footnote 3: Talm. of Bab., _Shabbath_, 33 _b_.]

[Footnote 4: Philo, _Leg. ad Caium_, Sec. 38.]

[Footnote 5: Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. iii. 1 and 2; Luke xiii. 1.]

[Footnote 6: Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. iv. 1, 2.]

[Footnote 7: John xviii. 35.]

Pilate, then, would have liked to save Jesus. Perhaps the dignified
and calm attitude of the accused made an impression upon him.
According to a tradition,[1] Jesus found a supporter in the wife of
the procurator himself. She may have seen the gentle Galilean from
some window of the palace, overlooking the courts of the temple.
Perhaps she had seen him again in her dreams; and the idea that the
blood of this beautiful young man was about to be spilt, weighed upon
her mind. Certain it is that Jesus found Pilate prepossessed in his
favor. The governor questioned him with kindness, and with the desire
to find an excuse for sending him away pardoned.

[Footnote 1: Matt. xxvii. 19.]

The title of "King of the Jews," which Jesus had never taken upon
himself, but which his enemies represented as the sum and substance
of his acts and pretensions, was naturally that by which it was sought
to excite the suspicions of the Roman authority. They accused him on
this ground of sedition, and of treason against the government.
Nothing could be more unjust; for Jesus had always recognized the
Roman government as the established power. But conservative religious
bodies do not generally shrink from calumny. Notwithstanding his own
explanation, they drew certain conclusions from his teaching; they
transformed him into a disciple of Judas the Gaulonite; they pretended
that he forbade the payment of tribute to Caesar.[1] Pilate asked him
if he was really the king of the Jews.[2] Jesus concealed nothing of
what he thought. But the great ambiguity of speech which had been the
source of his strength, and which, after his death, was to establish
his kingship, injured him on this occasion. An idealist that is to
say, not distinguishing the spirit from the substance, Jesus, whose
words, to use the image of the Apocalypse, were as a two-edged sword,
never completely satisfied the powers of earth. If we may believe
John, he avowed his royalty, but uttered at the same time this
profound sentence: "My kingdom is not of this world." He explained the
nature of his kingdom, declaring that it consisted entirely in the
possession a