r. "When, therefore,
he heard these words, he brought Jesus out, and sat down in the
judgment-seat at a place called the Pavement, and it was about the
sixth hour."

With ill-concealed irritation, and adopting the recent phraseology of
the priests, he said, "Behold your King!" At which they cried, "We
have no king but Caesar. Away with Him; away with Him; crucify Him."
It gave Pilate savage pleasure to put the cup of humiliation to their
lips, and make them drain it to its dregs. "What!" said he; "shall I
crucify your King?" Then they touched the lowest depth of degradation,
as, abandoning all their Messianic hopes, and trampling under foot
their national pride, they answered, "We have no king but Caesar."

At last, therefore, he delivered Jesus to them to be crucified, signed
the usual documents, gave the customary order, and retired into his
palace, as one who had heard his own sentence pronounced, and carried
in his soul the presage of his doom.

Long years after, when, stripped of his Procuratorship, which he had
sacrificed Christ to save, worn out by his misfortunes, and universally
execrated, he was an exile in a foreign land, with his faithful wife,
how often must they have spoken together of the events of that morning,
which had so strangely affected their lives!

XXXI

The Seven Sayings of the Cross

"Then delivered he Him therefore unto them to be crucified. And they
took Jesus and led Him away."--JOHN xix. 16.

Driven from one position after another by the Jewish notables and
rabble, Pilate at last, much against his will, gave directions for the
Lord's crucifixion. The purple robe flung over His shoulders was
replaced by His own simple clothes, though the crown of thorns was not
improbably left upon His head.

Two others were led out to suffer with Him--highwaymen lately captured
in some red-handed deed. Barabbas, their chief, for whom the central
cross had been designed, had escaped it by a miracle; but they were to
suffer the just reward of their deeds. A detachment of soldiers was
told off under a centurion, to see to the execution of the sentence,
and the heavy crosses were placed upon the shoulders of the sufferers,
that they might bear them to the place of execution.

It was probably about ten A. M. when the sad procession started on its
way. Two incidents took place as it passed through the crowded
streets, which surely had never witnessed such a spectacle: no, not
even in