nt words. We
shall see that He adopted another tone when He was properly arraigned
before the assembled Sanhedrim; but in this more private, injudicial,
inquisitorial interview, with one scathing rebuke He tore away the
cloak of assumed ignorance with which this crafty man veiled his
sinister purpose, and laid His secret thoughts open to the gaze of all.

For the time Annas was silenced. He had made small headway in the
informal examination of his prisoner, and he now gave it up. Whatever
resentment he may have felt at our Lord's answer he carefully
concealed, biding the hour when he might vent the vials of his hate
without stint.

We must not suppose there was any anger in that long-suffering heart
toward this judge. He was even then about to die for _Him_, and to
bear the guilt of the very sin He so pitilessly exposed. But surely it
was the part of love to show Annas what he was, and to utter words of
rebuke in which, as in a mirror, his secret thoughts might be revealed.
But if, in the moment of His humiliation, Jesus could thus search and
reveal a man, what will He not do when He is no longer prisoner, but
Judge? Oh, those awful eyes, which are as a flame of fire! Oh, those
awful words, which pierce to the dividing asunder of the joints and
marrow, and discern the thoughts and intents of the heart! What wonder
that men shall at last call on the rocks to hide them from the wrath of
the Lamb! Kiss the Son, lest ye perish from His presence, when His
wrath is kindled but a little! Blessed are they who can stand before
Him without blame!

Then followed one of the grossest indignities to which our Lord was at
this time subjected. On speaking thus, one of the officers, in the
spirit of that despicable flunkeyism which will sacrifice all nobility
and self-respect to curry the flavor of a superior, smote our Lord with
a rod, saying, "Answerest thou the high priest so?"

When afterward they came around Him to mock and smite, He answered
nothing; but when this first stroke was inflicted the Master said
quietly, "If I have spoken what is false or unbecoming, prove that I
have done so; but if you cannot, why do you strike Me? No one has the
right to take the law into his own hands, much less a servant of the
court."

It is impossible not to recall the mighty utterances against the
resistance of wrong, spoken from the Mount, in the Messiah's manifesto:
"I say unto you that ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall