The gospel of John tells us that after the examination Pilate said, "I find no fault in this man," and wanted to release him, but the Jews cried out: "If thou let this man. go, thou art not Cæsar's friend. Whoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Cæsar." The chief priests protested also, "We have no king but Cæsar." We may be confident that Pilate never wanted to spare a man who claimed to be king of Israel, and that he knew as well how to protect the interests of Rome as did the Jewish rabble and priests.

When the Romans crucified a criminal, they posted up his crime on the cross; and, in accordance with that custom, they affixed to the cross of Jesus the words, “The King of the Jews." If the claim of that title had not been a capital crime, Pilate would not have dared to announce it publicly. The Romans were strict observers of the forms of law, and there was a considerable Roman garrison in Jerusalem with high officers familiar with the main principles of the law.

The soldiers understood the charge and taunted Jesus with his treason and his failure in it. "Hail, king of the Jews!" The Jewish rabble added their taunts, “Let Christ, the king of the Jews, descend from the cross."

The question of Pilate, the condemnation, the protests of the Jewish people and priests against release of the prisoner, the inscription on the cross, the taunts of the soldiers and rabble addressed to the man suffering the agonies of the crucifixion,—all these indicate that the only charge against Jesus was treason. And that the charge was believed to be true by the friends of Jesus is proved by the lament of the disappointed zealot after the crucifixion, "We trusted that it had been he who should have redeemed Israel;" and also by the query addressed to

him after the resurrection, by one of his apostles, "whether he would at this time restore the kingdom of God?"1

Jesus was arrested with the aid of a traitor as if he was known to few and had been concealed. Otherwise the treachery and the payment for it would have been without reasonable motive. The betrayal implies secrecy and conspiracy; and these harmonize with the statements that Jesus preserved silence and enjoined upon others silence about his messiahship.

SEC. 532. A Rebel.-In section 526 we found that most of the speeches and actions attributed in the gospels to Jesus are inconsistent with the theory that he intended to establish a new religion, and also with the hypothesis that the main purpose of his public labors was to reform Judaism. The only other theory that seems to deserve serious consideration is that he plotted a rebellion against Rome. With the help of this last supposition, which, as we have seen, is corroborated by a large array of testimony, we can understand many things that without its aid would be incomprehensible. Many of the measures which would have been taken by Jesus, if he had possessed superhuman wisdom and power and had intended to establish Christianity as it now exists, he did not take; whereas, he took many of the measures which the plotter of a revolt against Rome, arrested near the beginning of his career, would have taken.

If an intelligent Jew, about the beginning of the Christian era, had aspired to re-establish the Jewish monarchy and to place himself on its throne, he would have claimed to be the heir of David, the Messiah of Biblical prophecy and of Jewish expectation. He would have concealed his claim from the multitude until he was ready to take up arms. He would have explained it confidentially to some

few persons whom he considered trustworthy. If questioned publicly whether he was the Messiah, he would have replied evasively or refused to reply. He would have traveled about the country to become acquainted with its military resources, with the feelings of the people, and with men who might become his chief subordinates. He would have spent most of his time in the rural districts, away from the Romans and those Jews who were most friendly to the Roman dominion. He would have avoided Jerusalem, which had a large Roman garrison and strong fortifications. He would have selected none save Jews for his associates. He would have strictly observed the ceremonial law of Moses. He would have been an attendant at the temple and the synagogue.

He would have found the organization of a rebellion against Rome a very arduous enterprise. He would have encountered Jews who could see nothing but disaster for themselves and their people in such a project and who would do all they could to render it abortive. He would have met ignorant zealots, ready to resort to arms at once without any of the organization that would be necessary to make an outbreak formidable. From both of these classes he would have had to protect himself. After suspicion got abroad that he was engaged in making arrangements for a revolt, he would have had to conceal himself from those who wanted him to declare himself king without delay, and also from those who wished to arrest him as a disturber of the public peace. All these experiences, which would have occurred to the Jewish projector of a revolt against Rome in the time of Jesus, occurred to him.

A rebel against Rome, claiming to be the Messiah, would not have argued that the popular expectation of a

political and military leader was without foundation in the scriptural prophecies. He would not have undertaken to convince them that the true mission of the Messiah was to wash out the sin of Adam, to abrogate the ceremonial law of Moses, to abolish the priesthood of Aaron, to establish a system of worship without sacrifice, and to found a new religion called Christianity. And these are things Jesus did not do. On the other hand, if the main purpose of Jesus was to organize a revolt against Rome, why, after his execution, did his followers treat him as an object of worship? How did they succeed in making his name the nucleus of the greatest of all churches? Why did Paul never allude to the fact that Jesus was guilty of treason? Why did Paul speak of him as a purely spiritual Messiah? If Jesus was engaged in plotting rebellion, how could he have composed the parables? And if he did not compose them, whence could they have come?

It is easier to ask than to answer these questions satisfactorily, as it is easier to wonder at, than to comprehend, the mental processes of many other minds. There is much in the gospels that cannot be made to harmonize with any theory of the purpose of Jesus; much that was collected from false legends, by men who had little accurate information about Jesus. The problem here is not to find a hypothesis that avoids every difficulty, for that is impossible; but to find one that has the preponderance of probabilities in its favor. That one is found in the theory that Jesus undertook to organize a revolt against Rome and was executed as a rebel.

SEC. 533. Life of Jesus.—Not until the genuineness of the gospels and the main purpose of Jesus in his public ministry have been subjected to critical investigation, is

the student prepared to avoid serious errors in his conceptions of the origin of Christianity. As we have seen, the evangelists were not the companions of Jesus, and did not derive correct accounts of him at second hand. We do not know who they were or when or where they wrote. We do know that no one of them wrote a clear and coherent account of his movements and ideas, and that no one of them had a distinct conception of Christianity as we now understand it. They asserted much that is false; they omitted much that is true. They did not supply us with materials from which a satisfactory biography of Jesus can be compiled, nor can such materials be found elsewhere. The only trustworthy Christian author who lived in the first century of our era and whose writings are now in our possession, was Paul; and he does not undertake to tell the story of the life of Jesus, to give a comprehensive statement of his doctrines, or to quote any of his significant speeches. No contemporaneous monument, no contemporaneous heathen author, gives us any light.

So far as we can learn from the New Testament, Jesus had no educated associates, no familiarity with any foreign literature or language, no acquaintance with the important achievements of Greek science and philosophy. According to the gospel of Luke, he read once in public. It was in the synagogue of Nazareth, the city of his residence, among the neighbors who had known him from childhood. He had been absent at Capernaum, where, according to report, he had wrought wonderful miracles. He read from the Scriptures and made some remarks, saying that if the persons present expected any miracles from him, they would be disappointed, for he knew that "no prophet is accepted in his own country," "and all