irresistible that he must have been divine. If the illegitimate son of
a Bengalese peasant hanged by order of our lieutenant-governor in the
northwest provinces because of the mischief he was making among the
Moslems of Lahore were to establish his faith on the ruins of
Westminster Abbey, and install the successor of his leading disciple on
the throne of the British empire, we should not wonder at his
apotheosis. To do so much, with so little material, compels the
inference that there is the infinite behind. Nothing but a God could
control such a machine. It needed a fulcrum in eternity to make such a
change in the things of time with so weak a lever as the life of this
Galilean.

But it is not only Christ himself who becomes real to us, but what is
almost as important, we see his contemporaries as they saw themselves,
or as he saw them. Caiaphas--who that has seen Burgomaster Lang in
that leading role can feel anything but admiration and sympathy for the
worthy chief of the Sanhedrin? He had everything on his side to
justify him. Law, respectability, patriotism, religious expediency,
common sense. Against him there was only this poor vagabond from
Nazareth--and the Invisible. But Caiaphas, like other men, does not
see the Invisible and he acts, according to his lights, as he was bound
to act. He is the great prototype of the domineering and intolerant
ecclesiastic all the world over. Since the crucifixion he has often
changed his clothes. But at heart he is the same. He has worn the
three-crowned hat of the successor of Peter; he has paraded in a
bishop's miter; he has often worn the gown and bands of Presbyterian
Geneva. Caiaphas is eternal. He produces himself in every church and
in every village, because there is a latent Caiaphas in every heart.

Perhaps the character who comes out best is Pilate. He is a noble
Roman, whose impartiality and rectitude, coupled with an anxious desire
to take the line of least resistance and find out some practical middle
course, is worthy of that imperial race to whose vices, as well as to
many of their virtues, we English have succeeded. Pilate did his best
to save Jesus up to a point--beyond that point he did not go, and
according to the accepted ethics of men in his position, it would have
been madness to have gone. Why should he, Pontius Pilate, procurator
of Judea, risk his career and endanger the tranquillity of Jerusalem
merely to save a poor wretch like t