he palace and has Jesus brought in, so that apart from
the crowd he may examine Him. At once he puts the direct question,
Guilty or not guilty of this political offence with which you stand
charged?--"Art Thou the King of the Jews?" But to this direct question
Jesus cannot give a direct answer, because the words may have one sense
in the lips of Pilate, another in His own. Before He answers He must
first know in which sense Pilate uses the words. He asks therefore,
"Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee?" Are you
inquiring because you are yourself concerned in this question? or are
you merely uttering a question which others have put in your mouth? To
which Pilate with some heat and contempt replies, "Am I a Jew? How can
you expect me to take any personal interest in the matter? Thine own
nation and the chief priests have delivered Thee unto me."

Pilate, that is to say, scouts the idea that he should take any interest
in questions about the Messiah of the Jews. And yet was it not possible
that, like some of his subordinates, centurions and others, he too
should perceive the spiritual grandeur of Jesus and should not be
prevented by his heathen upbringing from seeking to belong to this
kingdom of God? May not Pilate also be awakened to see that man's true
inheritance is the world unseen? may not that expression of fixed
melancholy, of hard scorn, of sad, hopeless, proud indifference, give
place to the humble eagerness of the inquiring soul? may not the heart
of a child come back to that bewildered and world-encrusted soul? Alas!
this is too much for Roman pride. He cannot in presence of this bound
Jew acknowledge how little life has satisfied him. He finds the
difficulty so many find in middle life of frankly showing that they have
in their nature deeper desires than the successes of life satisfy. There
is many a man who seals up his deeper instincts and does violence to his
better nature because, having begun his life on worldly lines, he is too
proud now to change, and crushes down, to his own eternal hurt, the
stirrings of a better mind within him, and turns from the gentle
whisperings that would fain bring eternal hope to his heart.

It is possible that Jesus by His question meant to suggest to Pilate the
actual relation in which this present trial stood to His previous trial
by Caiaphas. For nothing could more distinctly mark the baseness and
malignity of the Jews than their manner of shifti