CHAPTER XI. "Follow to the judgment hall, View the Lord of Life arraigned; Learn of Him to bear the cross." THE soldiers conducted their willing captive along the path beneath the eastern wall, and up the ascent of Mount Zion, to the house of Annas, on the hill of Evil Counsel, where they found the infatuated conspirators convened together, and anxiously expecting their victim. But as Caiaphas, the head of the guilty conspiracy, was high priest that year, they adjourned to his palace. He was already prepared with suborned witnesses, and immediately proceeded to the trial; endeavouring, in the first place, by insidious questions concerning his doctrine, to constrain Jesus to implicate himself. He answered, with his characteristic wisdom and equanimity, "I spake openly to the world; I ever taught in the synagogue, and in the Temple, whither the Jews always resort; and in secret I have said nothing. Why askest thou me? ask them which heard me, what I have said unto them; behold, they know what I have said." An officer, who stood by, to guard him, irritated by his calm self-possession, and implied, conscious innocence, "struck him with the palm of his hand, saying, Answerest thou the High Priest so?" The insult was received with only a gentle remonstrance against the injustice of such treatment. Caiaphas next charged Him with a design to destroy the Temple, and of blasphemy; then of instigating the people to rebellion against the national tribute imposed by the Roman Emperor, which the witnesses he had bribed, endeavoured in vain to substantiate, so contradictory were all their depositions. This malicious investigation served only to prove his spotless innocence, as the Lamb of God, whose unblemished nature, according to the law of Moses, was to be ascertained before it was sacrificed. Dismayed and confounded by his heavenly and peaceful demeanour during the examination, Caiaphas started up, with instinctive but transient fear, lest he should really be the Messiah, and at once asked, "Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" Jesus answered, in a firm voice, "I am." I stand before you veiled in the garb of humanity, as my Father's willing servant, and intend, by submitting to the ignominious death you are about to procure for me, to fulfil his purposes of love and mercy. When I have thus made an end of sin, and have brought in an everlasting righteousness, I shall, in this two-fold nature, resume my essential glory. A day will arrive when you will be awfully convinced that I am God manifest in the flesh. "Hereafter ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven," with myriads of attendant angels, to execute judgment on the ungodly, and to put all his redeemed into possession of their heavenly inheritance. The momentary alarm with which Jesus had inspired Caiaphas, now gave place to fury at this open confession of his Divine nature; and with an hypocritical gesture of religious indignation, he rent his sacerdotal robe, and pronounced Him guilty of blasphemy by his own confession. All the conspirators concurred in the sentence, and contemptuously spat in his face, while the attendants bandaged his eyes, which beamed only with benevolence and mercy. The soldiers also, infected with the spirit of their employers, struck and derided Him, and the servants of the Sanhedrim lifted up their hands against Him as an impostor, and challenged Him to identify them, while blindfolded. Meanwhile, the disciples, in inconsolable grief and consternation, had escaped being involved in their Master's fate, in fulfilment of his own sacred f them which thou gavest me have I lost none." Peter and John, however, had not been able to refrain from following Him at a convenient distance to the palace of Caiaphas. John, being known to the high priest, "went boldly into the council chamber" during the trial; the less courageous Peter remaining outside in the porch, until he had made interest with the damsel who kept the door, to grant him admittance. Chilled by the heavy dews of the early morning, Peter approached a fire, which had been kindled in the centre of the hall, and as he stood among the people who surrounded it, another portress recognised his person, and taxed him with being a disciple of Jesus. In great dismay, he denied all knowledge of Him, and hurried out into the porch, just as the dawn was announced by the shrill crowing of the cock, and found himself in contact with another woman, who renewed the accusation. Again he denied the charge with an oath. But a relation of Malchus, who had probably seen him in the garden with Jesus, affirmed that his dialect proved him to be a Galilean, and one of his disciples. Peter, now losing all his moral courage, and fearing lest he should be taken into custody, began vehemently to curse and to swear, and positively denied for the third time all knowledge of his divine Master. Again the cock was heard to crow, and Jesus, who was standing on a raised platform before the tribunal of Caiaphas, opposite to the entrance of the palace, turned round, and cast a look of mournful reproach and wounded affection upon the faithless Peter. Struck to the heart, as he recollected his Lord's recent prediction, and awakened to an appalling sense of his ingratitude and falsehood, he hastened away, overwhelmed with shame and contrition, to some retired spot, and in an agony of self-reproach and grief, wept bitterly, and bewailed his sin with sincere repentance. It had not yet been the policy of Rome to deprive any tributary nation of its laws and privileges, but the Sanhedrim, having been lately removed from the council chamber, adjoining the priests' court, in the Temple, where only it was lawful to judge capital crimes, Caiaphas determined to refer the trial of Jesus to Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor. He was, therefore, conducted in chains to his residence, called the Pretorium, in the strong and extensive fortress of Antonia, which stood on a rock at the north-west corner of the Temple area, communicating with the court of the Gentiles, and divided on the north by a deep trench, from the suburb of Bezetha. As it was the feast of unleavened bread, the hypocritical priests, while their hearts were burning with malice and envy against their innocent victim, refused to enter the judgment-hall, "lest they should be defiled" by contact with the heathen. Pilate, therefore, was constrained to respect their scruples; but suspecting them of baseness and in-. justice, came outside the balcony, and said, in a |