will always be some who, though common appeals do not touch them,
yet respond to this delicate appeal. Is truth a magic word to you? do
you thirst for wisdom? There are those to whom the prizes which the
majority strive for are as dross. The race for wealth, the pride of
life, the distinctions of society--you laugh at them and pity them.
But a golden page of a favourite poet, a thought newly minted in the
glowing heat of a true thinker's mind, a pregnant word that sets your
fancy ranging through eternity, a luminous doctrine that rises on the
intellectual horizon like a star,--these are your wealth. You feel
keenly the darkness of the world, and are perplexed by a hundred
problems. Child and lover of wisdom, do you know the King of Truth?
This is He who can satisfy your craving for light and lead you out of
the maze of speculation and error.

But is it true, as He says here, that everyone who is of the truth
heareth His voice? Is not the world at present full of men and women
who are in search of truth, yet pass Christ by? It is a very strong
word He uses; it is, "every one who has been born of the truth." Have
you actually clambered on Truth's knees, and clung to her neck, and fed
at her breast? There are many who seek truth earnestly with the
intellect, but do not desire it to rule their conduct or purify their
heart. But only those who seek truth with their whole being are her
true children; and to these the voice of Christ, when it is discerned,
is like the sunrise to the statue of Memnon or as the call of spring to
the responsive earth.

Alas! Pilate was no such man. He was incapable of spiritual
aspiration; he was of the earth earthy; he sought for nothing which the
eye cannot see or the hand handle. To him a kingdom of truth and a
king of truth were objects of fairyland or castles in the air. "What
is truth?" he asked; but, as he asked, he turned on his heel, and did
not wait for an answer. He asked only as a libertine might ask, What
is virtue? or a tyrant, What is freedom?

But he was clearly convinced that Jesus was innocent. He judged Him to
be an amiable enthusiast, from whom Rome had nothing to fear. So he
went out and pronounced His acquittal: "I find in Him no fault at all."

[1] On Pilate there is an essay of extraordinary subtlety and power in
Candlish's _Scripture Characters_.

[2] An eloquent account in Keim (vi., p. 80, English tr.), who gives
the authorities: "in part a tyr