Again Pilate comes out to the waiting crowd more determined than ever to release Jesus.  But the leaders of the mob take a new tack.  They know the governor’s sensitive nerve.  “If thou release this man thou art not Caesar’s friend.  Every one that maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar.”  That word “Caesar” was a magic word.  Its bur catches and sticks at once.  It was their master-stroke.  Yet it cost them dear.  Pilate instantly brings Jesus out and sits down on the judgment seat.  The thing must be settled now once for all.  As Jesus again faces them he says, “Behold!—­your King.” Again the hot shouts, “Away—­Away—­Crucify—­Crucify.”  And again the question.  “Shall I crucify your King?”

Now comes the answer, wrung out by the bitterness of their hate, that throws aside all the traditional hopes of their nation, “We have no king but Caesar.”  Having forced that word from their lips, Pilate quits the prolonged duelling.

Yet to appease that inner voice that would not be stilled—­maybe, too, for his wife’s sake, he indulges in more dramatics.  He washes his hands in a basin of water, with the words, “I am innocent of the blood of this righteous man.  See ye to it.”  Back come the terrible words, “His blood be on us and on our children.”  Surely it has been!  Then Jesus is surrendered to their will.  They have gotten what they asked, but at the sacrifice of their most fondly cherished national tradition and with an awful heritage.  Pilate has yielded, but held them by the throat in doing it to compel words that savagely wounded their pride to utter.  The savage duel is over.

Victory.

Jesus is turned over to the soldiers for the execution of the sentence.  His own garments are replaced, and once more He is the central figure in a street procession, this time carrying the cross to which He has been condemned.  His physical strength seems in danger of giving way under the load, after the terrible strain of that long night.  The soldiers seize a man from the country passing by and force him to carry the cross.  As they move along, the crowd swells to a great multitude, including many women.  These give expression to their pitying regard for Jesus.

Turning about, Jesus speaks to them in words that reveal the same clear mind and masterly control as ever.  “Daughters of Jerusalem, be weeping for yourselves and your babes, rather than for Me.  The days are coming when it shall be said, ’Blessed are the barren, and the womb that never bare, and the breasts that never gave suck.’  If they have done these things while the sap of national life still flows, what will be done to them when the dried-up, withered stage of their national life is reached!”