One of the High Priests came up to him.

“If you set free this blasphemer, this demagogue, who, so He says, intends to redeem the Jewish nation from bondage, who has the devil’s eloquence with which to influence the masses, if you let this man go about among the people again, then you are your Emperor’s bitterest enemy.  Then we shall ask for a governor who is as true to the Emperor as we are!”

“You would be more imperial than Pontius Pilate!” He threw out that sentence to them, measuring their figures with contempt.  Whenever Rome touched any of their chartered rights they seethed with anger; but whenever they needed power to accomplish some purpose hostile to the people, they cringed to Rome.  They recognised no people and no Emperor; their Temple-law was all in all to them.  And they dared to advise the Governor to be imperial!  But the crowd murmured angrily.  The storm of passion was increasing in the courtyard.  A thousand voices threatening, shouting shrilly, demanded the Nazarene’s death.  At that moment his wife sent to Pilate and reminded him of her dream.  He was inclined to set the accused free at once.  Then in the dim light of the torches and the dawning day a dark mass appeared above the heads of the people.  It was one of those criminals’ stakes with the cross-beam like those erected out at Golgotha, only more massive and imposing.  They had dragged the cross here, and when it became visible to the crowd they broke out in heightened fury:  “Crucify Him!  Crucify Him!  Jesus or Pilate!”

“Jesus—­or Pilate?” Was that what they shouted?

“Jesus or Pilate?” was re-echoed from courtyard to courtyard, from street to street.

“Do you hear, Governor?” one of the High Priests asked him.  “There is nothing else to be done!  You see, the people haven’t been asleep to-night.  They are mad!” So saying, he seized the staff of justice, and offered it to Pilate.  He had turned pale at the sight of the raging mob.  He signed with his hand that he wished to speak.  The tumult subsided sufficiently for his words to be heard, and he shouted hoarsely: 

“I cannot find that this man has committed any crime.  But you wish to crucify Him.  So be it, but His death is on your consciences!” Purposely following the Jewish custom, he washed his hands in a bowl, so that those who could not hear him might see; then holding them up, all dripping wet, before the people, he exclaimed:  “My hands are clean from His blood.  I accept no responsibility.”  He seized the staff, broke it in two with his hands, and threw the pieces at Jesus’s feet.

Then there arose a storm of jubilation; “Hail to thee, Pilate!  Hail to the Governor of the great Emperor!  Hail to the great Governor of the Emperor!”

The High Priests humbly bowed before him, and the guards seized the condemned man.

CHAPTER XXXIV