Pilate took his place in the judgment seat, which was set up in the
place of the Pavement, or Gabbatha, outside the hall. He was resentful
against those Jews who had dared to intimate that he was no friend of
Caesar, and whose intimation might lead to an embassy of complaint being
sent to Rome to misrepresent him in exaggerated accusation. Pointing to
Jesus, he exclaimed with unveiled sarcasm: "Behold your King!" But the
Jews answered in threatening and ominous shouts: "Away with him, away
with him, crucify him." In stinging reminder of their national
subjugation, Pilate asked with yet more cutting irony, "Shall I crucify
your King?" And the chief priests cried aloud: "We have no king but
Caesar."

Even so was it and was to be. The people who had by covenant accepted
Jehovah as their King, now rejected Him in Person, and acknowledged no
sovereign but Caesar. Caesar's subjects and serfs have they been through
all the centuries since. Pitiable is the state of man or nation who in
heart and spirit will have no king but Caesar![1296]

Wherein lay the cause of Pilate's weakness? He was the emperor's
representative, the imperial procurator with power to crucify or to
save; officially he was an autocrat. His conviction of Christ's
blamelessness and his desire to save Him from the cross are beyond
question. Why did Pilate waver, hesitate, vacillate, and at length yield
contrary to his conscience and his will? Because, after all, he was more
slave than freeman. He was in servitude to his past. He knew that should
complaint be made of him at Rome, his corruption and cruelties, his
extortions and the unjustifiable slaughter he had caused would all be
brought against him. He was the Roman ruler, but the people over whom he
exercized official dominion delighted in seeing him cringe, when they
cracked, with vicious snap above his head, the whip of a threatened
report about him to his imperial master, Tiberius.[1297]

JUDAS ISCARIOT.[1298]

When Judas Iscariot saw how terribly effective had been the outcome of
his treachery, he became wildly remorseful. During Christ's trial before
the Jewish authorities, with its associated humiliation and cruelty, the
traitor had seen the seriousness of his action; and when the unresisting
Sufferer had been delivered up to the Romans, and the fatal consummation
had become a certainty, the enormity of his crime filled Judas with
nameless horror. Rushing into the presence of the chief priests an