lage of Massachusetts which was once a tavern, with the bar-room where now is the parlor. But a friend who lived in the house said that, though more than twenty years had passed away, yet if that parlor were kept closed a few days it would smell of the rum and tobacco which defiled it in its early bar-room days. A.D. 30. Early Friday Morning, Before Daylight. PASSION WEEK. PETER'S DENIALS. PETER'S REPENTANCE.-A diamond may fall into the mire, but it is a diamond still. REFERENCE. See under iii. 7. FAULTS OF GOOD MEN.-" Take the faults of the good men of the Bible, and put them all together, and the combination is frightful. . . The character of the very Devil might be made up from a mosaic of the bad side of good men."-Sunday-School Times. So could we form a Thersites, a human monster, of the physical defects, the warts, moles, wrinkles, and pimples of beautiful women or noble-looking men. "Some Christians are like the Leaning Tower of Pisa,-as far gone from uprightness as it is possible to go without toppling over. The world is much more likely to pull over the Campanile at Pisa than the Campanile to lift the world.”—Sunday-School Times. PETER'S WRONG COURSE WITH TEMPTATION.-" How to Beat the French" was the title of a lecture delivered in 1860, by Prince Frederick Charles, then a young soldier with abundant enthusiasm, but no fame. One of the chief points-borrowed, by the way, confessedly from the French tactics-was this: Never defend passively, but offensively."-The Advance. The same principle is taught by the Latin proverb from the history of the wars of Rome with Carthage, "Carry the war into Africa." THE DROP OF INK IN A BOOK.-" One of the brightest of our modern writers has given us a simile somewhat like this: If a careless reader lets fall a drop of ink in among the leaves of a book he is just closing, it will strike through the paper both ways. When he opens the volume again, he can begin with the earliest faint appearance of the stain, and measure by its increase his progress toward the great black point of defacement. Open it now anywhere, and he will detect some traces of the coming spot. He can turn back to it; he can turn forward from it. So of this great base act of the apostle Peter, which we call emphatically the denial. It is a stain in the middle of his life. But for a long time, on the previous pages of his life, he had been preparing for this disaster." —C. S. Robinson, in Sunday-School Times. CHAPTER XXVII. 1. When the morning was come, all the chief priests and elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death: 2. And when they had bound him, they led him away, and delivered him to Pontius Pilate the governor. 3. Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, 4. Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that. A.D. 30. PASSION WEEK. OF JESUS. 5. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself. 6. And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. 7. And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in. 8. Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood, unto this day. 9. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the chilldren of Israel did value; 10. And gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord appointed me. : II. And Jesus stood before the governor and the governor asked him, saying, Art thou the King of the Jews? And Jesus said unto him, Thou sayest. 12. And when he was accused of the chief priests and elders, he answered nothing. 13. Then said Pilate unto him, Hearest thou not how many things they witness against thee? 14. And he answered him to never a word; insomuch that the governor marvelled greatly. REFERENCE.--3. "Judas." See on xxvi. 47, 48. PICTURES.-Munkacsy's famous picture of Christ Before Pilate (excellent chromos of this picture by American Tract Society); Dürer's Christ Before Pilate. 12. HE ANSWERED NOTHING.--xxvi. 63. "A flower has been discovered in South America which is only visible when the wind blows; it is of the species cactus, and when the wind blows a number of beautiful flowers protrude from the little lumps on the stalks."-Anon. 15. Now at that feast the governor was wont to release unto the people a prisoner, whom they would. 16. And they had then a notable prisoner, called Barabbas. 17. Therefore when they were gathered together, Pilate said unto them, Whom will ye that I release unto you? Barabbas, or Jesus which is called Christ? 18. For he knew that for envy they had delivered him. A.D. 30. About PASSION WEEK. 19. When he was set down on the judgment seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him. So in these trials of Jesus are brought out his noble nature, his love, his patience, his faith, his hope. PILATE'S LIFE is like a beacon light to warn from dangerous rocks; like the sign "Christian and "Hopeful," put at the entrance to the way to Giant Despair's castle. 17. JESUS OR BARABBAS. "Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side: Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight, Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right, And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light." -Lowell. Pilate and the Jews threw away the great opportunity of their lives. "Of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these, 'It might have been.'" 19. HIS WIFE SENT UNTO HIM. -Whittier's Maud Muller. PICTURE.-The Dream of Pilate's Wife. 'Many will remember the picture, The Dream of Pilate's Wife, in the Doré Gallery in London. The dreaming woman is represented standing in a balcony and looking up an ascending valley, which is crowded with figures. It is the vale of years or centuries, and the figures are the generations of the church of Christ yet to be. Immediately in front of 20. But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas, and destroy Jesus. 21. The governor answered and said unto them, whether of the twain will ye that I release unto you? They said, Barabbas. 22. Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? They all say unto him, Let him be crucified. 23. And the governor said, Why, what evil hath he done? But they cried out the more, saying, Let him be crucified. her is the Saviour himself, bearing his cross; behind and around him are his twelve Apostles and the crowds of their converts; behind these, the church of the early centuries, with the great fathers; further back, the church of the Middle ages, with the majestic forms and warlike accoutrements of the Crusaders rising from its midst; behind these the church of modern times, with its heroes; then multitudes upon multitudes that no man can number pressing forward in broadening ranks, till far aloft, in the white and shining heavens, lo, tier on tier, and circle upon circle, with the angels of God hovering above them and on their flanks; and in the midst, transfigured to the brightness of a star, the cross, which in its rough reality he is bearing wearily below."-Stalker. ECCE HOMO.-Pilate led Jesus out before the rulers, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe (John xix. 5, 6), and said, “Ecce homo," Behold, the man! Let us hear the Ecce homo, and behold the man before us. Here is the noblest exhibition of love; here is a perfect example; here are all the highest virtues in their highest exercise; here is the fulfilment of ages of prophecy; here is the atonement in progress for the redemption of man; here is the central battle, and here is to be the central victory of the universe. One recalls Shakespeare's words about Brutus :— "His life was gentle, and the elements So mixed in him, that nature might stand up FARRAR quotes Marcus Aurelius as saying, "Whatever any one does and says, I must be good and true, as though the gold, or the purple, or the emerald were always saying thus: Whatever happens, I must be an emerald and Saying of keep my color." PICTURE.-Ecce Homo, Correggio (Nat. Gallery, London), Cigoli (Pitti Palace, Florence), Guido Reni (Dresden). 24. ¶ When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it. 25. Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children. LIBRARY.-The hymn beginning "I see the crowd in Pilate's hall, A.D. 30. April 7. Friday Morning. JERUSALEM. PASSION WEEK. JESUS BEFORE PILATE. -Sabbath Hymn Book, 747. 24. HE WASHED HIS HANDS, . . . SAYING, I AM INNOCENT.— Prof. Marcus D. Buell, of Boston, has stated that Neapolitan scolds and passionate lovers, quick to finish a quarrel by a dagger-thrust, attribute the violence of their temper to the disturbances of neighboring Vesuvius. Pilate's Vain It was bad enough for Adam to say, "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree"; it is worse for his sons and daughters to say, "The nature which thou gavest to be with us overcomes us. The conjunction of planets causes us to steal. A volcanic eruption makes us murderers. Drought drives us to divorce. Too much oxygen fires our blood, and impels us to carnivals of crime. Electricity breeds immorality."-G. M. Hammell. Pilate blamed the people. Men now blame circumstances, temptations, companions, difficulties; but all equally in vain. 25. HIS BLOOD BE ON US, AND ON OUR CHILDREN.-That blood was upon them, not as vengeance, but as a natural consequence of their conduct, as any one can see who reads the accounts. "Judas died by his own hand. Pilate was soon recalled, degraded, banished to Gaul, where he committed suicide, The tower from which he said to have precipitated himself is still standing. The prize for which he staked his soul never became his. Herod died in infamy and exile; Caiaphas was deposed the next year." -G. W. Clark. |